The Trap of Innocence
by Ms Western Ink
Summary: In the boundaries between two worlds, Aoshi Lord of the Dark discovers temptation. [AxM]
1. Part I

The Trap of Innocence

Author: Western Ink

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Rating: R 

Genre: Supernatural/Horror/Romance ?

Pairing: Aoshi x Misao

Summary: In the boundaries between the human world and the "underworld" reclusive vampire Lord Aoshi discovers temptation.

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Author's Note: This story sticks to no particular vampire legend. Anything I wanted, I added it. It's loosely based off of Vampire Princess Miyu, but very loosely. I took heaps of liberty with creative license. 

**Credit Notice: This story was inspired by Tesuka-chan (author of "The Vampire Aoshi") and Ravyn (author of "Blood Dawn"), both stories highly recommended.

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**

He peered, staring through the inky darkness, toward her window. He could hardly imagine himself being reduced to such a pathetic state, and yet it were so painfully true.

He, the great Lord Aoshi, playing the role of peeping tom.

Were it not so inviting, he would have been repulsed by the entire matter.

Yet still, she drew him forth. Stringing him along, drawing him further and further into her sickly sweet web.

She came into view, the light flipping on and her tiny figure stepping into the room.

It was the same every night. She made it painfully easy to spy on her, to watch her most intimate moments. She made it a simple task to become obsessed with her.

Her pale colored skin shone, even under the hideous yellow lighting of her bedroom. She looked best in moonlight, clothed only in her pure, alabaster skin. She dressed that way for him often. Clothed in milky sheets and pure, untainted skin. He loved her best that way.

She radiated innocence.

Bright, curious eyes not befitting of her age. Lips, a pale, pure pink rather than red and seductive. A joyful, buoyant personality that seemed so appropriate for her.

Her small hands made him dream of shaking fingers fumbling over his shirt buttons, ripping with innocent impatience. Her small, slender fingers wrapped around his heated flesh. That tiny frame spread over his lap.

That small woman in the room above him - a woman who charged rashly forward always getting more involved than she could handle.

A tiny figure that begged to be tamed. He licked his lips as she rose from where she'd sat at her school desk.

A mere sixteen year old girl had him flushed like a teenage boy ripe in puberty. He groaned silently, his blood pulsing.

She walked over toward the windows and stared out. That she did every night.

She pushed open the window and perched herself on the edge. He'd been startled as, one night, she'd risen from her bed and leapt from the window to the ground. He'd followed her to some midnight rendezvous with a young boy from her neighborhood.

He'd been hoping it would be the last night of her virginity. Both hoping and hating.

Her virgin blood was his biggest ward. The singular thing that kept him from leaping upon her and snatching her from where she now sat staring out into the night, lost in her thoughts.

She was a complete innocent, mind and body. She was the _worst _thing he could ever ask for.

The blood in her veins would burn the skin from his body with an awful, agonizing hiss and a sickly curl of green smoke.

He'd seen it himself, the danger of virgin's blood. Not fourteen months past in the Aquis, his favorite haunt, he'd seen that very thing happen.

It hadn't kept him from finding her again after that first, enchanting night. The chill her very presence brought to his body wasn't enough to ward him off completely. It only served to whet his appetite and increase his dangerous longing for her.

_It was dark, the music quietly drumming as the girls dressed as geisha's plied their musical trade by the line of shoji doors. One could sit all night and watch the girls play, but no touching. The geisha girls were entertainers only, the courtesans were kept inside, hidden from the eyes of the low-grade customers. _

_The Aquis was an exclusive club that catered to the finer taste's of a man's fancy, if one could afford it. _

_Many a night, when bored, he'd sit alone near a corner his tea steaming away on his small tray. He'd stare at the women as they danced on the small, low staged floor. _

_He liked the soft smiles and gentle touches of the women who dressed themselves so elaborately and spoke so gently. He liked to watch their tiny hands loosen the ties of their clothes, never fully removing them, only parting the gown just so._

_He liked the feel of creamy thighs on either side of him and pushing them far and wide apart and driving himself deep inside while the chosen woman whimpered beneath him. He liked biting the woman as she lay, panting, too weak to move. But... that had been before. _

_Before he realized he was tempted by something else. Something much more difficult to obtain. Something much more different. Something much more dangerous. Something... he couldn't buy._

_He slinked through the open room, navigating through the courtesans and their customers, all entertaining on the floor, most in some kind of flirtatious conversation that would lead to more intimate contact sooner rather than later._

_He came around to the back room, intending upon slipping out for the night when a short figured female slammed straight into him._

_He, surprised, caught her by the shoulders. She reared back from him, stunned and afraid. Bright eyes widened in pure terror for a matter of moments before she'd caught her bearings and glared._

_Glared and dared to snap at him about releasing her before he did what came natural to him and pushed her into a store room, sliding closed the door with his foot. Trapping his prey in a corner, he grinned._

_He licked his lips, leaning forward, sliding his fingers apart enough to grasp the material of her cute little flower print kimono and slide it off her shoulder._

_Who was this? He hadn't been aware there were new girls on the floor baring creamy pale flesh to his eyes . _

_Yumi got new blood so rarely, it seemed. Correction: Yumi got anything that was good very rarely. _

_She trembled, her bottom lip quaking. Again, she spoke._

_"G-get off me!" _

_He ignored her, as if she'd never spoken at all. He leaned down, determined to taste the tiny treasure thrust into his grasp. His slid his tongue across her shoulder as she attempted to thrash away, but was grossly unsuccessful. Her fearful, embarrassed groan turned into a sweet sigh as he kissed along her neck, sliding his hands down to the tie of her obi, which he realized, was all wrong. There was no elaborate tie in the front, it was slim and tight and... around her back. It was.. proper. _

_He drew back suddenly and took a closer look at his little gift. His eyes widened as the thing before him became recognizable. His lips and tongue now burned from touching her skin as an eerie chill swept over him, almost a paralyzing wave of cold that froze his nerve endings. _

_His head dropped to hide the painful reaction._

_"Virgin," he groaned. "What is your name?"_

_She trembled. "M-Misao."_

_"Misao? What is your surname, Misao?" He pressed, not willing to let it escape him. _

_"Makimachi."_

_He drew away completely._

_Makimachi._

_**Makimachi**!_

_He turned, sliding open the door almost violently before turning back, snatching her wrist and dragging her along with him._

_He stalked menacingly toward the back door and threw it open and hurled her out. She tumbled, unable to stand the force of the movement, thumping to the ground._

_"You have no business in a place like this, do not return." He warned, sliding the door closed succinctly._

He had spent much of the night trying to rid his mouth of the taste of her skin, unsuccessfully. Trying to forget how small and tiny she was. Trying to forget how slim her hips had been and how soft her skin was. Trying to forget, fruitlessly, what his body was begging for.

Afterwards it had been an easy task to track her down.

Makimachi was a name very familiar to him.

Makimachi Misao was even more so.

She was the daughter of his best friend, known these days as "The Beast Hannya". He was, formerly, known as Makimachi Takeo when working in the human realm.

It was Makimachi Takeo that had sired the young beauty Misao.

The girl was a miracle of sorts. A child created between a human and a vampire - an impossibility. An impossibility according to human lore.

He found the tales of human legends fascinating and had spent years reading and searching through countless volumes. If it were as humans thought it to be, vampires were nothing but 'undead' humans transformed by fangs and the taste of blood into zombie like non-living creatures.

It all made for a quite fascinating read, but it was the most ridiculous notion he'd ever come across. As it stood, in perfect truth, vampires were a different breed of _human_. One was the hunter, the other the prey. He had spent many nights in his youth staring down from school top roofs into the empty courtyards wondering where his purpose in life was.

His parents had taught him that vampires were supposed to be guardians, to watch over their weaker counterparts, but it seemed pointless. So many of the humans themselves were bad.

Yet, Hannya, one of his best friends, had mated with a human not so long ago. Years though, it had been.

Years indeed.

He had peered into the eyes of Hannya's child some weeks past. He had tasted her. He had wanted her.

The girl, Makimachi Misao, should not exist. His breed was not supposed to mate with humans, and conceiving with them was _supposed _to be impossible.

Hannya kept no contact with the human he had mated with. He may not know of the existence of the child at all.

As far as he, Aoshi, knew, it had been nothing more than a drunk encounter between him and the woman one night when the fog was heavy. That was all he'd ever heard of it, Hannya was not given to being talkative on the matter, or any matter really.

Suddenly, she swung her feet out over the window ledge and dropped down. Graceful as a cat she was, and just as deadly with that blood of hers.

She stood from her crouched position.

She was such a short girl, so tiny, so easily he could hurt her.

"I know you're there, so come out here."

He didn't move.

Was she speaking of him?

Did she know he was there?

Could she know?

"You're not moving!" She snapped. "I want to see you, _here_, now. I damn well deserve too especially given that you're the pervert that's been watching me for how many nights now! I think I've been more than patient with you, so come out now or else!"

He stepped out, slinking toward her. "Or else what?"

He towered over the small thing before him. He could see her frame tremble slightly.

"... Y-you, I remember you! I met you at that..."

"Whorehouse?" He drawled, leaning down toward her. "The Aquis is no place for virgins."

Already he could feel power seeping from her... purity begging to be corrupted.

She drew her chin up. "What do you want? Why are you always following me?"

"Following you?"

"Don't play dumb. I know you're following me, always watching me from my window," she snapped.

He leaned closer, trapping her against the wall. "Oh, so you've known all this time? Have you been letting me watch you? Leaving your curtains open, just for me?"

He just barely saw her blush in the dim light, stemming off an amused chuckle. She had been letting him watch, the little vixen.

"I can leave my curtains open if I want to, you just can't look in them whenever _you _want to," she snapped, crossing her arms, trying her best to keep up her defiant act.

"Where is your parental figure?" He asked, gaze darting over house windows, searching for signs of life. "You live with a mother, do you not?"

He didn't know who she lived with. He assumed she lived with her mother, but he hadn't seen anyone else in the house. But then again, he never arrived before nightfall and never looked at any windows but hers.

"Mother?" she scoffed. "I don't have a mother and I live here alone. I'm not a little girl, no matter what you happen to think about it."

"Where is your father?"

"I don't have one of those either, stop asking twenty questions. I asked you one first, you can't just pick and choose what you want to answer, mister."

"If you live alone, why did you leap out your window to meet with the male some time ago? Why didn't you go via the door?"

"Because I thought you were a sucker and would follow me and then I'd confront you. But you managed to elude me and I couldn't. As for the guy, he was just convenient."

The house was empty, what a nice thought. It also left him feeling rather stupid. This whole damn time she'd been alone?

That aside, the night air felt so good, he thought, peeling off his long overcoat, tossing it to the ground. The chill in the air was perfect.

A gentle breeze wisped through the area, stirring his hair and hers, causing the leaves above and below to rustle. Misao trembled against the frame of the house, her neck covered in a white, off color collared shirt high up under her jaw.

He stood back from her, taking her by the arm and propelling her toward the door.

"Go. Change."

"Change?" she asked, looking to be onto the verge of another outburst.

"Into that white kimono from before. Come back down here. I'll wait."

"What makes you think I won't just go in and not come back out? Or, better yet, why won't I just sneak out the other door and take off toward town?"

He grinned with the assurance of complete confidence. "If you wanted to escape me, you wouldn't have been enticing me for weeks."

"It wasn't weeks," she huffed.

"It was," he replied, noting her pale blush.

Oh, sweet.

She turned away from him, heading into the small house. Did she really live here alone? Could she? So young?

How old was she? He'd thought her no older than 16, but that simply couldn't be. He could not recall the age of Hannya's child, but now that he thought about it, she must be quite older than she looked.

He stood, turning his back to the structure, leaning against it as she had been as he waited. The wind blew, ruffling his clothes and sweeping across his body intimately. How nice a night it was.

Perfect really.

He smiled to himself, content in his decision.

His obsession was changing clothes for him.

He heard her movement, and her nearness surprised him. Her feet were bare, just peeking out from the hemline of her white colored kimono. He couldn't discern the distinct pattern of the furisode in the darkness but he could tell the design of it for certain.

Her hair fell still in a long, casual braid down her back.

She approached him and he almost grinned in the darkness. He stepped up, away from the building, and she backed away. When her bare foot touched his fallen overcoat, he reached, snaking his arms around her waist and dragging them both to the ground.

The night was perfect... so perfect.

She looked a bit miffed to be pulled to the ground, but he would take care of that, he thought, leaning closer, dragging his hands from her hips to her shoulders, shoving her down.

She wouldn't care much longer where she was, who she was, or anything else about her life. She'd only care about him.

His eyes glinted in the darkness, and he lowered his head, sliding his tongue sensuously down her jaw and placing wet, open mouth kisses along her neck. He reached, snagging his fingers in the cloth of her kimono, dragging it off her shoulders.

How he loved women in a kimono. Modern clothing would never top the garment that, for as long as he could remember, given him as much pleasure when he got to remove it.

There was nothing in stripping a woman out of a blouse or skirt or other articles, but the kimono...

She moaned sweetly, her eyes closed. He raised his head, slanting his mouth against hers and she whimpered against his lips. His tongue darted against the seam of her lips, sliding, and tasting.

She arched beneath him, pushing her breasts up against his chest and he groaned. Already he could feel her heady power.

His lips burned from the contact with hers and his body felt cold in response. It was enough for him to draw away enough to let her catch her breath and for the reaction he was having to lessen enough.

He watched her, eyes open staring up at him, chest heaving slightly.

He slid his eyes over the print of the kimono, more bouncy patterns. This time it was little bunnies sitting on clouds with rainbows overtop. Really, and she _wasn't _a little girl?

He leaned back down, sliding a hand behind her to peel at the quickly tied sash. He pushed the tie aside and pulled open the garment. She gasped as cool air rushed across her exposed chest, his mouth sliding over one pert breast.

She gasped brokenly as his tongue flicked over her hardened bud, her hands slid over his shoulders and tangled in his hair. Her moaning was egging him on and the cold that had swept over him had faded leaving him feeling hot and wanting.

He slid his mouth up, running his tongue over her collar bone, admiring her pale flesh in moonlight before slinking closer to her neck. In one lost, dazed moment, his mouth slipped and his teeth nicked her skin.

The blood that slid to the surface scalded his tongue, but his body was on fire for her. Dropping his head, he sank his teeth deep causing her to tense beneath him, her hands fisted tight in his hair.

"You would dishonor me so, Aoshi-sama?"

Aoshi's head snapped back, eyes aglow, blood and saliva mix sliding over his teeth. He hissed in pain, holding his body over hers still even as he turned his feral gaze to the one who would interrupt him.

The blind fury faded as he caught sight of the demon mask, but he made no move to disengage himself from the woman on whom he lay and Misao was quietly panting, looking somewhat oblivious to him or anyone else.

Hannya's mention of Aoshi's senior rank as lord surprised and concerned Aoshi. It was infrequent for Hannya to address him such.

"You mean this girl?" he motioned casually to Misao.

"You know she is mine," Hannya replied. "Yet you still determined to take her without my permission? Even after all this time?"

Aoshi drew back slightly, pulling himself up to kneel on his knees. Only then did Misao seem to wake from her haze, eyes clearing. She sat up pulling her kimono closed, turning her head back. She met Hannya's gaze directly, but didn't look startled or afraid. She might have been embarrassed, but he couldn't be sure if she was blushing or not.

Then she glanced back at Aoshi.

"I did not know you would mind. I was not aware of any connection you had with her."

"You did not ask," Hannya replied. "Misao has not remained unclaimed by accident."

The sheer weight and tone of his words caused Aoshi to stand completely, drawing entirely away from her.

Hannya had been protecting her all this time?

He stepped back into the shadows by the house. "I am sorry," he stated, tone sincere but terse. "I did not mean to impose upon you, Hannya."

There was a hissing sound and a curl of gray smoke and both knew Aoshi was gone. The coat beneath Misao vanished also, rising up in a cloud of silvery dust and vanishing on the breeze.

"You know better, Misao."

She looked toward him, straightening her kimono.

"You play games with the men in your boredom, but Aoshi is not one you can control. Stay away from him or you will find yourself belonging to him."

She pouted. "I was doing perfectly fine," she protested. "I had him right where I wanted him."

"You were completely helpless, do not deny the obvious. It is your blood running down your neck now, not his. Stay away from him, he's too dangerous for you."

She scowled. "Too dangerous for me! Don't I live for the dangerous jobs?"

"Not him. He's not a project. Aoshi is the Lord of the House of Shinomori, that makes him your Master in technicality. Do not get any further involved. I am warning you."

"I didn't get involved!" she protested. "He did!"

"You are encouraging him," Hannya replied stepping back. "Do your job and behave yourself."

She sighed as he slipped away leaving her alone.

The House of Shinomori?

Was he really the Lord Hannya served?

She smiled.

Amazing.

* * *

Beast Hannya stood back, staring over the steel railing looking down at the people below. Behind him, he felt another approach. 

"Aoshi-sama..." Hannya drawled, not turning toward him.

Aoshi came up to stand beside him. "She is... ?"

Hannya glanced toward him. "She is one of ours. Misao inherited my blood. She learned some time ago she could repress her baser instincts and that her virgin blood was a ward against the aggressive males of our species. The seals increase her natural defenses and seem to quell her more wild instincts. She likes to tease."

"Tease?" Aoshi asked. "How unfortunate."

Silence lapsed between them for a few moments.

"What is her place?"

She had to have some type of duty, Aoshi surmised. She wasn't wandering the earth for nothing. If she was Hannya's and had taken his blood, that meant she had inherited his vampiric wants and needs, no matter if she repressed them. Which couldn't, he imagined, be an easy thing. Or, entirely possible given a biological necessity.

"She is a realm guardian. Shikijou needed someone to weed out the unwanted in his hunting grounds and I procured the job for Misao. "

"How does she restrain her baser wants?" he asked, desperate to know how she managed to survive without the hunt.

"Holy seals around her wrists and neck help, they do not function completely. They mostly serve to tame her more feral instincts. She removed them when you ordered her to change clothes," Hannya replied looking down over the side of the building.

So many people were out today, even in the rain. Misao loved when it rained, he thought, thinking back to his rambunctious child.

"Why is she serving Shikijou? She's your child, that puts her in my dominion."

Hannya turned toward him. "What is your intention for Misao?"

Aoshi turned likewise to face him. "I have no intention."

"You have spent weeks watching her for nothing, Aoshi-sama? Surely, you have another you can direct your attentions to."

Aoshi's expression tightened. "You do not approve of me...?"

"Your interests run vain, Aoshi-sama. Misao is my daughter, I want more for her than to be one of your conquests. You aren't more than a passing amusement for her."

Aoshi's smirk caused Hannya pause. "A conquest of mine?"

Hannya tensed slightly and looked away, unsure of this man who had been his friend and master so long. Even after all this time, he did not understand Aoshi or his motives.

Hannya turned at Aoshi's silence only to find him gone. Feeling unnerved he too turned to go.

* * *

Shikijou lounged, stretching out his body. The water was an annoying tepid temperature and getting cold. Where was that servant girl? His muscles ached, he needed _hot_ water. 

Just as he was about to bark out a call for her, another appeared. He almost blanched at the sight of the unexpected man.

"Eh... Aoshi-sama...?" He almost groaned at the sight of his House Master. Aoshi was the current head of the House of Shinomori.

The House of Shinomori was a Ruling House. One of only two, the other of which was the House of Saitou, a clan hell bent on the distribution of justice and ruling order.

All servants of the dark realm fell under the jurisdiction of the two ruling houses, the House of Saitou, or the House of Shinomori.

Shikijou belonged to the House of Shinomori.

"I have heard from Hannya you have a girl in your employ, clearing your grounds?" Aoshi asked, remaining where he was by the door just staring at the man submerged in the huge stone tub.

"Eh... Some female." He opened his mouth in a wide, leisurely yawn, surprised he could be tired in the presence of the Lord of the House of Shinomori. At least the man didn't seem interested in taking off his head... yet. "Hannya suggested her to me. Said she was trouble and it would keep her busy, so I agreed and set her up in some place. She's good, surprisingly. Tiny little thing though..."

Aoshi just stared at him a moment.

"Did you want her?" Shikijou asked, unsure of any other reason why the Lord could be visiting his domicile.

"Yes," Aoshi replied. "I do want her."

Shikijou nodded tensely. "She's all yours, Aoshi-sama. Please, take her."

He encouraged, only too happy to do anything to please his Master. If that scrawny little thing could make the master happy, that was good. That meant he would be happy too.

"Thank you."

Aoshi stepped out the door and Shikijou breathed a sigh of relief.

Seeing Shinomori Aoshi was a rare occurrence. The man was well known for being a recluse, living like a noble lord tucked away in his castle on a dark hill. The Lord of the House of Saitou was a much more frequent visitor, although no more welcome than the other guy.

They were both sword wielding, attitude toting, maniacs when in pursuit of something. He'd seen it himself, first hand, but he respected Aoshi-sama. The man was tough but fair and always took care of his own.

He didn't know the first thing about the girl though. Only that she had some kind of connection to Beast Hannya and a big mouth.

* * *

Aoshi stared at the little house. Misao's little house, he mused, walking up to the front door. Was she home now? 

He was just raising his hand to slide open the door of the old house when it was pulled open from the inside.

The bright ocean colored eyes were not surprised, they were expectant.

"You're a tad predictable. Anyone ever tell you that, Aoshi-sama?"

He stared at her a moment and then stepped forward, wordlessly inviting himself inside.

She didn't say anything about his intrusiveness, she just closed the door. He peered around. So, she was a realm guardian, was she? One of those who hunted and killed the strays who had left the Dark Realm without permission.

The penalty for unauthorized departures was death, and the realm guardians dealt out the punishments. He couldn't imagine, though, that she got much to kill in this deserted place. He couldn't imagine her killing at all.

He turned back, but her gaze was turned toward another room.

"Oh! My tea water!"

Tea?

He reached suddenly, snagging the back of her blouse, pulling her back. From the other room, he heard the blaring of a water kettle on the stove.

The black material pulled tight, dipping to mid shoulder. He recoiled sharply as needles of pain shot up his arm from contact.

She whirled around with an angry snarl. "Hands off the clothes!" she snapped. "I have to buy these and money isn't something I've got a lot of."

"So... You _are_ wearing holy seals?" he asked, flexing his fingers, ignoring her outbursts.

How did she manage that? To wear holy seals and not sear her skin with the touch?

"Of course I'm wearing them. I'm not here to hunt _humans_, I'm here to hunt demons," she stated, matter-of-factly.

"Demons?" he mused. Is that what she thought of him as? A demon? What then of herself? Was she not a demon beneath her holy seals?

His eyes narrowed.

"You're over thinking it, I can tell just by looking at you."

She pulled herself free and headed into the kitchen toward the blaring kettle leaving him alone. After a moment of silence staring at the old design of the room, noting the low table, cushions, wall hangings and amiable emptiness, he followed after her.

It was a very peaceful place. It seemed like something completely unsuited to her boisterous personality.

"This is your residence?"

She was tinkering with a tea set, and didn't bother looking up while she answered.

"Yeah, but I'm just borrowing it. Actually, I'm leaving it soon, too boring. I don't like being in the middle of nowhere."

He watched her stir a golden brew and lift the small teapot and pour a small cup.

"Want some? This is all natural chamomile tea. It's good for you, try it." She poured him a cup and he reached for it, bringing the brew to his lips to sniff.

It smelled quite pleasant, he noted, lifting it to his lips trying the warm liquid. A bit too sweet, he thought, but ... It was quite good.

Of course, there were other things he'd like to be tasting, he thought, staring at the prayer beads around her wrists.

It was a fascinating little discovery, he thought. He never would've imagined Hannya's half-breed child could be so... interesting.

"What are you here for, anyway? Hannya told me very clearly to stay away from you, which I can't do when you're popping up all the time."

She sipped her tea quietly, a little frown upon her lips.

"If you have no mother, by whom were you raised?"

"Raised?" she asked, her face turning solemn. "I haven't been a little girl in a long time," she admitted. "My guardian died some time ago... years and years it seems like."

She turned away, looking out the window.

"A human guardian?" he pressed. There had to be some reason for her reasons to remain here the way she was. He didn't imagine she would choose such drastic methods to contain her own nature if not influenced by a human.

Hannya, surely, hadn't taught her such a thing. He wasn't called "Beast Hannya" because of his face, despite the mask he wore.

"Yes, got a problem with that?" Her tone and eyes turned sharp as she looked back at him as though daring him to say one bad thing about humans before she pounced on him.

Well, that certainly explained it. He reached forward toward the delicate glass beads around her wrist, close enough to touch, but not daring to. "This is unnecessary..."

"Unnecessary?" her voice was almost a whisper. "Have you any idea what I'm like when I don't wear them?"

He inclined his head slightly staring at her expression of absolute horror.

"Do you have any idea the kinds of things I can do to people?"

She didn't like hunting? Why did she look so haunted?

"It is what you are," he replied absently, setting aside his tea, wanting nothing more than to snap the beaded chains restraining her and see her wild.

She had not attacked him on the eve when he'd been a breath's away from seducing her on the lawn, but he was the stronger. Even without feeding she would have sense enough not to attack, she was apparently living well enough and had to have been for some years now.

"What I am!" she shot to her feet so quickly, it surprised him. "What I am!" she repeated, this time her voice more sedate. Her eyes seemed to flash. "I'm not anything!"

"You're afraid," he stated, words simple and even. He watched her carefully for a reaction and wasn't disappointed. The girl was transparent.

Her eyes widened in complete outrage.

"Afraid? Me? I'm not afraid of anything. Not fighting, not dying, not you. Don't come to my house and run your mouth!"

"You are afraid," he answered smoothly. "You're afraid of your hunger. Your wants. Your desire _not _to be human."

"I am not! You don't know the first thing about me!"

The raising of his eyebrow was a silent challenge. "Show me."

She growled, stalking forward toward where he sat in the only high western-styled chair in the house.

He'd taken the seat impulsively and was now glad for it as she crawled up in his lap, spreading her knees on either side of his, pressing her hands down on the wooden armrests.

"Are you saying, I won't bite you?" she cocked her head to the side, her expression tight and angry. "That I can't? Like I'm some kind of impotent half-breed?"

His reply was an expectant silence, as though to say 'you know you won't'.

He was surprised at her usage of the words 'impotent half-breed' and immediately determined it wasn't her own vocabulary, but that she'd likely heard it from someone else. It would explain part of her quickness to anger and her wantonness to disprove it.

She growled at him, but it was more of a sexy little growl than it was threatening.

She leaned toward him and he waited, eagerly.

Her breath fanned against his neck. Her weight shifted in the chair as she pushed her knees nearer to the back and further over his lap.

His collar was low, a simple casual cut leaving space for her tongue to slid across his skin.

The warm slickness of her tongue sent a delicious shudder through his body and again, he wanted her. He heard her broken gasp and saw a faint glow around her wrist.

So... The seals had activated.

He lifted a hand, pressing it to the back of her head, cradling her gently, encouraging her. She dipped her head slightly, nearer to him, another brush of her tongue sent quivers down his spine.

When had he ever allowed such a thing? He'd never, not even in childhood, been bitten by another. Who would imagine the heartless House Lord always shoving people away would be allowing such a young female such complete dominion over him, allowing himself to be bitten?

He wanted it so much. He checked a groan as her mouth met his skin with hot, open mouth kisses. The pressure of her lips was painfully erotic, surrounded by the soft scent of her, and then the fine points of her teeth against his flesh.

He couldn't contain the groan as she bit sharply down, piercing his flesh, only to draw back just as quickly.

More soft laps of her tongue made pulses of heat dance over his body, rapidly descending southward.

He just barely stifled a grunt as she kissed his wound, bringing her hand to the opposite side, curling her fingers around his jaw. She pushed his chin up, tilting his head upward as she slid her mouth across his jaw, planting kisses along the way. Her hand slid up, sliding through his hair.

He was too entranced, too drunk on her, to want to stop her. He'd didn't anticipate the hot snap of her teeth as she bit him again, deeper this time, piercing through his flesh.

His jaw tightened at the pain and then loosed as she drew back, licking him.

The hand in his hair slid down, past shoulder to meet the other as both pushed his coat open, flattening against his chest.

Aoshi tensed as, over Misao's shoulder, he spotted an ivory mask. He repressed his frustrated growl as Hannya stepped into view, bringing his arms up, crossing them.

He waited for the man to speak.

"Surely, you realize the danger of letting an inexperienced girl bite you, Aoshi-sama."

Aoshi leaned forward, gently holding her against him. His muscles quivered as she shuddered against him, slumping, her head against his chest. From around her wrist he could see the beads were gone... Melted into speckles of dust coating the arm of the chair, but most had fallen into a powder that littered the floor by the back legs.

"You think I am unable to control her?" Aoshi asked, unhappy with Hannya's intrusion.

"It isn't her I'm worried about."

Ah, well, that explained it. Hannya was worried that he would seduce the girl. He cursed his timing, Hannya was showing up just when things were getting good.

Damn it.

Misao drew back and he immediately noticed the difference in her eyes. "You never let me have any fun, Hannya."

Why she didn't call him "father", or some name thereof, he wasn't quite sure.

"You've broken your seals, Misao," he stated, without addressing her previous comment.

She shrugged, her eyes alit, glowing almost ethereally. "I'm sleepy."

Beautiful eyes, he thought, staring into the glowing orbs. She would be a magnificent hunter.

"Go to bed," Hannya ordered curtly.

She curled her arms around Aoshi's neck. "Can I take Aoshi-sama with me?"

"No."

She pouted, her lips drawing back into a smile, her teeth glimmering. She drew back, off his lap. "No, fun, Hannya. No fun at all. Night, night."

He watched her go, his eyes trailing up her frame as she climbed the stairs.

"You should give her to me," Aoshi replied, glancing back at Hannya.

"I believe it is the wrong thing to do," Hannya firmly replied.

"Very well," Aoshi agreed and stood.

Both knew it wasn't the end.

He had tasted her.

She had tasted him.

_This was only the beginning._

* * *

Author's Note:

This story is likely to contradict itself at any given point as I weave in different things. I'll try to avoid it, but it's completely possible.

"The Aquis" – I do not know where I got this from. I cannot remember, if you've seen this before, won't you tell me where? I try and try to remember and get nothing…

Any similarities between this and any other RK vampire tale are strictly, and _honestly_, coincidental. I've only read 3 of the 40 of them posted on this site.


	2. Part II

The Trap of Innocence

Part II

* * *

Author: Western Ink

Email: see profile

Genre: Supernatural/Horror/Romance ?

Pairing: Aoshi x Misao

Summary: In the boundaries between the human world and the "underworld" reclusive vampire Lord Aoshi discovers temptation.

* * *

He watched her pace the length of darkness, her eyes aglow. She was such a beautiful girl, he thought. He was so proud she was his creation.

"Misao?"

She stopped, turning her gaze toward him. She looked somewhere between feral and frightened.

"I told you to stay away from Aoshi-sama, did I not?" It might have been a warning tone, it might not have been.

"He came after me. What was I supposed to do, tell my Realm Leader to get lost?"

"One's title has never stopped you before," he noted, approaching.

She turned toward him fully, ceasing her pacing. "Stay away!"

He watched with weary eyes as she began to look nervous. "Feeling uneasy, Misao?"

She bit her lip and resumed pacing. "It's this feeling. Without my seals...I can't... I can't... It's so..." He watched tears spring at the corner of her eyes, revealing her desperation.

Misao never cried.

He stepped closer and she eyed him wearily. With a single lunge, he had her pinned. She gasped as his hand wrapped tight around her throat, her small hands rose to claw at his gloved hand.

"Unwise of you, my child, letting him break your seals. Do you see now, how much you've come to depend on them?" he whispered, then glanced back. "Miko!" he called.

Behind him, a young woman neared, her red and white hakama denoting her occupation. In her fingers dangled five small chains of beads, barely the size of tiny silver pin heads, almost invincible from the distance they stood apart.

Misao gasped for air as Hannya continued to hold her, his grip tight.

"No dallying, Miko, seal her."

The human girl began to chant, and the beads glowed. Her face was non-descript, her long hair pooling on all sides of her, dark and straight. She kept her face turned down, her fingers laced together, the beads between them.

"Such an effort for something so easily breakable..." A deep, smooth masculine voice broke through the rhythmic chanting.

The miko paused, her head snapping up, frightened by the newcomer. Aoshi walked past her without interest, as though she were unseen. Hannya continued to hold Misao and she continued to struggle.

"Misao's seals are to protect her. Misao is mentally unstable without them. My mistake, allowing humans to raise her, but it is done. She is what she is."

"How does she survive without hunting? Even she, only half of your blood, must have needs."

Hannya frowned. "Misao is her own woman. How she handles her lusts is her own business, I only watch to keep her safe."

Aoshi frowned, but made no move to interfere, just watching the girl continue to ineffectively attempt to attack Hannya.

"Miko..." Hannya growled.

The miko dropped her head and began chanting once more. The beads glowed and vanished, reappearing around Misao's wrists, ankles, and neck. She gasped, and her struggling against Hannya stopped.

A harsh gurgling sound reached his ears. He watched her eyes clench tight, her fists balling, arms now limp at her sides.

Hannya released her as the glow faded, a coil of tiny beads around her neck, glittering in the dim light. She fell, unable to hold herself up, collapsing into a heap.

"Ooohh, that stings," she whimpered, her head toward the floor. Even her voice quivered.

Hannya remained where he was, just staring at the fallen girl. After several minutes of silence, she picked her head up and struggled to her feet. She glanced at her wrists, staring at the jeweled pieces.

"They look fragile. Why didn't you use something stronger?" Her gaze was beyond Hannya, her question directed toward the miko.

"They are new, my grandfather has designed them especially for you, Makimachi-san. He says they should hold you more firmly than the others while still managing to amplify your natural defenses." If the girl knew anything of which she was speaking, she didn't say. Her entire demeanor revealed nothing, just a blank, impassive face.

"Oh," Misao replied, glancing down at them and then lifted her head to smile. "Thank you, miko-san. My thanks to your grandfather, I don't remember meeting him, but I do appreciate it."

The miko nodded and quietly turned, leaving them alone, looking only too happy to get out of there.

Aoshi stepped forward, coming around Hannya who now stood several feet from Misao. A large, red blotch now adorned her neck from the pressure of his fingers.

He stared at her a moment, waiting for her gaze to meet his. She finally obliged him with a frown on her lips.

"You're very troublesome to me, Aoshi-sama. Don't come to where I am anymore. You should have more important things to do anyway, as a Realm Leader."

She stood firmly, meeting his gaze boldly. He stared at her a moment longer.

"This charade will only hurt you in the end."

Misao watched him as he vanished into the breezy afternoon and she leaned back against the wall, slumping. The old shed behind her was rotting at its corners, but still remained solid along the lengths.

"Is he always so difficult?" There was a wisp of fatigue in her voice.

"Yes," Hannya replied, disturbed by Aoshi's warning.

It was not something he had not thought of on his own. Misao was a friendless, formless girl, flitting through the world. She stayed to herself, only venturing to town when she felt it was necessary.

Her only companions were a loosely tied group of individuals she met near her house at a dojo where she liked to practice. _Himura, Kamiya, Sagara, Myoujin..._ They were all pleasant enough people, but it concerned him if they ever found out about her true nature...

Misao had felt the sting of rejection many times. She'd been hunted and spurned and mocked many times over, but she had handled it on her own. She refused to turn away from the path on which she stood. She remained doing what she'd done for as long as he could remember after meeting her, holding her position as Realm Guardian.

Her dedication to her job made him proud of her, but her underlying reasons for doing so worried him. She hunted with a viciousness that surprised him. A thick, mean streak that hid in the shadows of her bright smile. He'd recalled one evening seeing her bathed in moonlight, blood streaking down one cheek.

It had been her own blood that night, he thought. Her prey had gotten away and she'd been left there, injured.

The hatred that boiled in her eyes when she'd looked at him that evening shook him. It had been the first glimpse he'd been given of what lurked behind her smiles and pleasantries and made him wonder.

What filth had her human guardians soiled her ears with about him and others? What had she been told to inspire such complete hatred this way?

Misao was such an odd contradiction. Nor was her reason for staying in this Realm out of sheer love for humans. She, at times, hated them with just as great a passion. She did not want to leave the only home she'd ever had, but knowing all the same that she'd never belong to it. She vehemently protested even the thought of dwelling among her 'own kind'.

Her savage distaste for her own vampiric brothers caused him increasing amounts of alarm as her hunting trips became more and more barbaric. Misao restrained her baser instincts only to release the bound emotions on those who might identify with her position.

He sighed and turned away. He didn't know what to do about her. He'd been startled when she ran headlong into him one dark evening, meeting under an ill placed streetlight.

She'd pushed away and stared at him a moment, examining his mask, then she'd laid into him with verbal insults about being in her way.

He had to give her points for courage. The girl had so little fear in the world.

After she'd thoroughly thrashed him to his face she'd walked by only to get into another fight with his companion not ten feet away. Only the next person she'd collided with wasn't half as friendly, and he'd watched her flay the demonic little imp that had been his servant.

The quick hands and the blood surprised him that night. He hadn't seen the kunai, nor sensed any kind of dangerous aura emanating from her, not even when she'd yelled at him.

She'd gone from harmless kitten to raging lion in a moment, and then sprinted off into the darkness leaving him to wonder.

It was no surprise then so many others found her fascinating. Vampiric men, especially, were drawn to Misao. Wild and open - she was free with her words and her weapon. Misao was more a feisty prey than a mate, however, and drew many interested parties.

Sometimes trying to understand her was extremely disheartening.

* * *

Aoshi stepped through the front door and was his presence immediately noticed. His servants tensed, casting uneasy glances in his direction and the staff quickly scurried to get out of his way. The halls were clear and empty of clutter, everything perfectly in place.

The wood floors shined and were perfectly smooth, the walls clean, the lights low.

He slid open a door, noting how similar his own space was to Misao's. The half-demon girl with the traditional home, although she had admitted it was not her own. He wondered, as he stepped into his private office, what her space would look like.

"You look troubled, Aoshi-sama. Are there problems in the Realm?"

Aoshi sat down at his desk, brooding.

He barely glanced at the aging man who had appeared in his doorway. "Should you not be working, Okina?"

He'd sensed the older man, but figured it was easy enough to get rid of him. He might as well wait to see what he wanted.

Okina's response was a smile. "My work is finished and all the girls are busy today."

When Aoshi concluded there was no problem, he filtered everything else out, his mind already working on her.

"Shikijou's territories are within my Realm holdings, send Omasu and Okon out. There is a girl I want monitored. I want to know everything."

Okina's surprise was evident as his eyebrows shot up and a hand drifted to his beard, stroking it. "Is she trouble for us, Aoshi-sama?"

A look of uneasy curiosity settled over the old man's face as he thought out how much trouble one lone female could be. He wandered in to stand before Aoshi's desk.

"Realm Guardian," he replied, ignoring Okina's question. "Her name is Makimachi Misao. She is Hannya's child."

"H-Hannya? Surely, you don't mean those rumors of his fathering a half-breed were true?"

Aoshi turned away from the bookcase he'd been staring at.

"She is unpredictable, have them keep their distance. On their own, I'm not certain they could stand up to her. Together, they might fare well enough but avoid confrontations if possible. If she is approachable, I am not adverse to their befriending her."

Again, Okina's question was ignored, but the old man was far too used to it to be offended. He stroked his beard thoughtfully, fingering his small pink bow.

"Yes, yes, I understand. Very well, I'll send them out at once. Anything else, Aoshi-sama?" Okina asked, simply a matter of routine.

"_Bored_? _Shinomori?" _

Both men turned unwelcome glares toward the now filled doorway where another visitor appeared.

Damn Saitou for being so quiet. Okina stared at the man for a moment and bowed, completely outranked.

"If you will excuse me, Aoshi-sama. I will tend your orders."

Okina quietly left, closing the shoji behind him. Aoshi propped up an elbow on his desk, leveling an even stare on the opposite House leader. He saw Saitou so rarely, it must be important.

"What brings you here?"

It was no small distance across the realm, although Saitou, by rumor, did nothing but travel. His mate, a lady by the name of Tokio, was a famous recluse, the abandoned, beautiful bride of the House Leader. It was said she wailed at the peak of the mansion for his return, but it all sounded far-fetched to him.

He'd met her only once when he'd tried to hunt down Saitou to discuss a set of slayings. Tokio was a practical woman. She handled all House matters in her husband's absence.

Human girls hung by their ankles from poles, pools of blood beneath their feet, half skinned, their heads hanging precariously by fine sinews of flesh.

It had been gruesome, even for a world that thrived on the blood of humans. It was a horrid display that caused fear and panic to well up in the Realm, especially after the initial 7 females were followed by 2 young vampiric girls. Their bodies eviscerated and carved.

Uprisings had resulted as every little town and villa near the border had their suspects. Handfuls of people were strung together and burned alive. How many innocents had died in the resulting chaos was unknown, but it was believed the murderer had been among them as the killings stopped afterwards.

Saitou invited himself in and sat in the singular chair opposite his desk. "Heard something interesting..."

"Since when are you inclined to rumors?"

Already, Aoshi dreaded the interview. He knew enough of Saitou Hajime's personality to know he didn't like it and he wasn't going to like this.

"I've heard there's some girl causing trouble. Since it was your Realm's problem, I didn't care. But since several of my citizens have turned up diced, I'm not resolved to be so patient on the matter."

"Some girl? How do you know this?"

"Informants. She's been seen. Young, long hair, rumored to be the latest amusement of yours."

Aoshi frowned. Despite rumors to the contrary, he very rarely entertained such 'amusements'.

"This amusement have a name?"

"Makimachi Misao."

He might have choked at the sudden mention of the name. _Her_ name.

"Impossible," Aoshi replied.

Saitou's grin worried him. "Don't like the sound of that, Shinomori?"

From inside his uniform blue jacket, he pulled an envelope and tossed it onto Aoshi's desk.

Aoshi pulled open the adhesive sealed flap and withdrew out one glossy black and white photo. Despite all the fuss his brethren made over humans, they relied very heavily on their weaker counterparts when it came to technological devices.

There, in the photo, she stood, a tanto in her hand, blood dripping down the blade. Her braid was hung over one shoulder, eyes gleaming in the darkness. Aoshi tossed it aside capriciously.

"Worthless. Misao is a Realm Guardian, it is her duty to kill unauthorized trespassers."

"You mean to insinuate _I_ don't know the rules?" Saitou scoffed. "Two of the men dead are officials of mine."

"Where were they killed?" Aoshi replied smoothly.

"Human Realm."

"Were they authorized to be there?"

"No."

Aoshi half-shrugged. "I don't see the problem."

Saitou growled. "They were A-list officials. They are not subject to unauthorized departure rules, it is their duty to oversee the Realm Guardians."

"Aa, but the Guardian you are suspicious of is not killing one of your officials in the photo and she is currently under observation. Your trip was needless."

* * *

Omasu stretched. "It's been so long since I've been out here."

Okon nodded. "Yeah, Aoshi-sama only ever authorizes us for business."

The two shared a frown. The road was nothing more than a worn down track in the grass. They walked along, their feet kicking up dirt unintentionally with every step.

"Why are we watching this girl?"

"I'm not entirely sure," Omasu replied. "Direct orders from Aoshi-sama, but Okina said she was a Realm Guardian. You know how much freedom they're given. They're allowed to do anything they want, maybe she's suspected of something."

"I suppose that's possible, but usually only very trusted people are given this job, aren't they?"

"I don't think so, not anymore. There have been a lack of volunteers to guard the Realm borders because of the stigma's attached to it back home. Last time I heard they were accepting anyone who came."

"You mean the borders are being guarded by whatever riff-raff comes along?"

"Well, Okon, really it's a one-way border. They're not keeping humans out, but keeping us in."

"That's the place." Okon pointed one slender finger toward it.

The two females stared at the tall house. It wasn't grand, but nor was it shabby. But it was old and two stories up, brown colored with a peaked cornered roof.

"Realm guardians provided houses?"

Omasu nodded. "Depends on the importance of the guardian watching the land. We're in Shikijou's territories here. I think he has only one guardian."

"So, his territory, compared to say, Hannya's, is much smaller..."

"Hannya's territories are inland, like twenty-five times bigger and not border lands. Hannya doesn't need any Realm Guardians." Omasu sighed.

"Oh... that's right, I forgot."

"I'm going to head a bit North of here and peek around. You stay by, we need to find her as soon as possible. The last I heard, Aoshi-sama was impatient for details on her whereabouts."

Okon nodded.

* * *

Misao frowned walking up the pathway. It was pouring down rain, her clothes were soaked, and she'd lost track of her target. She'd noticed some suspicious activities occurring around the border gates, strangely dressed men appearing and meeting with other _human_ men.

What was suspicious about the whole thing was the apparent business feel of it all. She'd watched them, two nights in a row, meet and speak. They hadn't ventured far from the gate, within a few feet and then they'd talked no more than ten minutes before disbanding.

The two human men had dressed in business suits, a strange sight for this far out into the wilderness. There were no cars around, none that she had seen. The attire of the others had been formal also. She hadn't, however, seen them since. Either pair.

She peeled her hair back from her skin, pausing as she reached the security of her porch. What was that feeling? She turned, casting her eyes over the yard, but saw no one. The feeling remained the same, however.

Someone was watching.

Someone who wasn't Aoshi-sama or Hannya.

She'd been trained by Hannya to detect the difference between authorized and unauthorized visitors. The border territories like Shikijou's opened once at the end of every month and the hunt began.

It was forbidden by law to hunt at any other time during the month, outside the official date.

Her job depended on her ability to detect and root out those allowed and those disallowed in the properties.

Aura reading had been a pivotal skill. Those authorized for travel into the Human Realm were adorned with a pendant that changed the resonance of their auras. It was something, once recognized, that couldn't be forgotten.

The others had a dull echoing feeling that caught sharply in her ears.

It wasn't that sound she heard. It was the other. Someone had sent a spy.

* * *

Standing in front of Aoshi had never been so terrifying before, she thought. His eyes were narrowed, centered on her. Why was today so different?

She had just been doing her job. Her recent kill was off some feet beyond the bushes, not the corpse hacked up near her feet. She had just been doing her job, and then poof, there he was.

The only sound between them was the dripping of blood off her blade as it impacted with the ground. The scent of it hung heavy in the air, rising from the corpse a couple feet away.

There was a slight sound behind her. She tried to turn but was caught as a male arm wrapped around her, his chest pressed up against her back. A powerful male arm stretched across her shoulders, her wrist holding the tanto gripped tight by the stranger with gloved hands.

_Who was this?_

She hadn't even felt him approach! Even humans gave off some kind of feeling...

She felt the long fingers of his other hand slide beneath the beads around her neck.

"What is this, Shinomori?"

Aoshi didn't respond and the man leaned closer. She could just barely see his gleaming gold eyes.

"So... This is the little assassin? This little weasel hardly looks capable enough to kill anything, let alone a handful of my men."

She stiffened. "Weasel?" she snarled, moving to attack, but he was gone.

She gasped. One moment he'd been real and solid pressed against her and then next, nothing. She hadn't heard, felt or saw anything, he was just... gone.

It wasn't even a blur.

"Who is...?" she started only to trail off. "Assassin? I'm not an assassin!" She snapped.

Both men looked back at her from where they'd been staring at the dead man on the ground. His body had been cleaved in two through the abdomen. There was a deep, dark pool of blood beneath the body, the cloth was ripped through where the body had been cut. Organs were spilled over the ground, leaking fluids that tainted the air with more than the scent of death.

"Really..." The man drawled, his lips thinning into a frown.

Misao held up her tanto. "Amazing girl that I am, even I, cannot cut through a guy with this. Besides, I've never cut anyone in half before. I'm not that gruesome a person, even if I do get carried away sometimes."

Saitou raised a brow at the notion and reached forward, plucking her blade away. He brought it up to his face, sniffing.

Misao gaped. He was smelling her sword? She frowned. He tossed the blade aside and she scrambled to catch it by the handle and not the bloody blade. He turned his back to her entirely.

"You see anyone else here, weasel?"

She glowered, staring at the blood now staining her hands. "Just that weird lady following me around. I saw something sparkling so I came over and found this guy. Then _he_ showed up." She pointed to Aoshi. "And don't call me weasel!"

There were a few moments of silence before Misao's head turned suddenly in the opposite direction. She stared. So... someone else was wandering around that shouldn't be. It was really a rather busy night.

How did so many people escape through the supposedly guarded gateways on the other side anyway?

She glowered, but the look faded as she turned back to Aoshi. "C-Can I go?"

She had told him she hadn't wanted to see him there. There he was.

She had the feeling something dangerous was going on and she didn't like it. She knew, however, she was directly subject to Aoshi. She couldn't explain why it seemed to suddenly matter though, just cause that other guy had shown up. Something about him was... extremely dangerous.

She trembled as Aoshi's gaze returned to her. He nodded once without a word and she took off in the opposite direction, her eyes narrowed.

Aoshi watched as Omasu followed after Misao. So, she knew she was being watched. Did she know about Okon too?

He turned back to Saitou.

"If the girl didn't kill him... Then, someone else is running around killing off my men," Saitou mused.

Aoshi didn't say anything, eyes trained in the direction Misao had run in.

* * *

She jumped up onto the old stump, it was termite infested, structurally weak, and balanced herself. She looped her arms around his neck, leaning close.

It had been a couple days since she'd last seen him.

She leaned close, her breath a warm touch against his face.

He watched her lean close and felt the velvety softness of her tongue against his cheek.

"You don't come watch me anymore, Aoshi-sama."

He remained still.

Were Okon and Omasu watching? Were they watching their Master be seduced by this girl? This young, inexperienced girl?

"Do you want me to watch?"

She'd told him not to, and he hadn't had time for her girlish fancies lately. There was a conspiracy afoot and he hated conspiracies.

Especially if they weren't his and he wasn't inclined to making them.

Saitou, on the other hand, loved conspiracies. More specifically, lopping off the heads of conspirators.

Her arms tightened and her lips moved, kissing down his neck.

Hannya had asked him to stay away from her. His best friend had asked him - why couldn't he honor this request? Why did he keep returning to the young woman who was as unpredictable as a hurricane?

He shuddered feeling the gentle prick of her teeth. The last time she bit him, her seals broke. Did he care if they broke again?

She drew away, but he reached up, again touching the back of her neck, his fingers sliding up into her hair, cradling the back of her head. No, damn the seals.

He pressed her gently, guiding her back to his skin. He fought the shudder of his own body as her mouth made contact with him once more. He slid his fingers through her strands, stroking her scalp softly and she sighed against his neck.

The soft moan was disarming, relaxing him, knocking him off guard as her teeth slid into his flesh.

He couldn't repress the violent tremble of his body or the heady wave of arousal that suddenly gripped him. His hand on her head tightened and she drew back, licking him softly.

But something was bothering him. He felt something he shouldn't have. Something in the air... Someone, perhaps.

Misao drew away from him, meeting his eyes when he recognized the feeling.

"Saitou," he growled, ignoring Misao's surprised expression.

A low, maliciously amused chuckle parted their private silence as Saitou stepped into the wooded clearing. Misao glanced back at him, but didn't release her hold on Aoshi.

"Never would've though the stoic _Aoshi-sama _ got off on being bitten."

Aoshi's eyes narrowed, his euphoric Misao-induced haze, dispelled. "What do you want?"

He didn't bother moving away, and Misao kept her arms around him, but fidgeted. Saitou just stared.

"Some of us are working."

Misao shifted.

"Who the hell are you, anyway?" Misao asked, dropping her arms away from Aoshi and hopping down walking toward him. "Always interrupting, so rude... just walking around wherever you damn well please..."

Saitou smirked. He looked past her toward Aoshi. "Realm guards are required to be educated in the official hierarchy - or is she here in this nowhere place just for your amusement?"

Misao blanched. "What! That is grossly untrue! I'm not a 'amusement' of any sort, thank you very much!"

Saitou didn't even glance in her direction. "Misao didn't come to be under my direction until very recently. In any case, it's irrelevant, her position as Realm Guardian is temporary."

He felt her eyes on him but she didn't say anything and he didn't meet her gaze.

She blinked and tensed cautiously when she noticed Saitou staring at her, gold eyes glinting, a thin line across his mouth.

She watched him pull the glove off one hand. He reached, sliding a hand beneath her chin, turning her head up as he stepped closer, eyes narrowed on her. He drew back after a moment, pulled back on his glove.

"I see." He glanced back at Aoshi a moment and then returned his gaze to her. "Then let me relieve of you of that _particular _innocence. There are two Realm heads, one is Shinomori there and the other is me, Saitou Hajime."

Her eyes widened in surprise and he grinned at her.

Her look of surprise vanished quickly. "Well that partially explains your personality, doesn't it?"

"Misao..."

She turned back toward Aoshi.

"Go."

She glared, but didn't seem to want to protest. She turned on her heel and slipped into the darkness, her presence vanishing from them as she moved further away.

Aoshi waited, expecting some smart, degrading comment from Saitou about Misao, but none was forthcoming.

Rather, Saitou began patting down his pockets reaching for a cigarette.

"Well, hell of a night."

He lit his cigarette, puffing contentedly.

"Yesterday, there was a sighting of a woman in a teal furisode, toting around a battle scythe walking along the cemetery park road near one of the border gates. Several hours later another official popped up, carved in pieces."

"A woman with a scythe?"

"Honjou Kamatari is suspected."

Aoshi nodded, recalling the cross-dressing male obsessed with rebel leader Shishio Makoto.

Years ago Shishio had staged a revolution to uproot the government. He'd been defeated in the end by a lucky combination of things and his followers had scattered.

Some, Kamatari among them, had been imprisoned. No one had paid much attention to the depressed cross-dresser when he was released from jail, but it wasn't such a stretch if the man had finally leaped off the deep end of sanity and was now taking revenge in some twisted fashion.

Always a possibility.

"Where is he now?"

"Unknown, believed to be wandering through the lesser populated territories."

Like Shikijou's, he thought. What would Misao do if she came across Kamatari? He was not a permitted guest of the region. She would target him.

Damn.

"Better keep an eye on your weasel girl there. She doesn't look like she could handle Kamatari alone."

Saitou turned, tapping the ash of his cigarette away.

* * *

Misao left Aoshi and Saitou alone wandering about. She'd caught the feeling of an intruder and headed in that direction. She peered around for her target and finally spotted him ahead.

Misao froze, watching as her intended quarry was suddenly engaged by another. He was young, she noted. And fast. And... human.

With a swipe of his blade and a gory spray of blood the intruder fell, gurgling to the ground. She watched, flinching, as the young man drove his sword through the throat of the creature and sliced off his head.

That would probably be enough, sometimes the stronger vampires could survive having their heads cut off, as amazing as that was. When she went against someone she felt was unusually strong she drove a silver dagger through the heart and took the head off, she'd never had one get up after that. Although if she was really feeling that uneasy, she set them on fire.

Vampires burned well.

Scarily well.

Made her wonder sometimes if she'd light up like a tinder box like the others.

She stepped forward, surprising him as he suddenly turned toward her.

"Who are you?" she asked, not drawing her weapon attached at her back horizontally at her waist.

He stooped slightly, pulling his sword from the corpse.

He brought a hand up and she watched him hack and wheeze, a horrid, grating noise. His entire body shook as he coughed.

"Seta Soujiro," he replied, taking a deep breath.

"Seta Soujiro, what are you doing out here killing people?" she asked, not sure what she was seeing.

"People?" He asked, flashing her a smile. "Not a person at all. But... You know all about that, don't you, Miss?"

She frowned, stepping back. "You are just a human, you are not permitted to engage in battle with unauthorized realm guests."

The "technical talk" as she liked to call it had been drilled into her by Hannya. He had made her repeat it a thousand times, saying how important it was for her recognition as a guardian among certain circles. It had all been very convoluted and she still had no idea what he was talking about.

His eyes widened. "Could it be? Oh..." He raised a hand, scratching his head awkwardly, smiling at her once more looking very young and boyish. "I apologize. You must be the Realm Guardian of this area. I did not mean to get involved in your duties, but after I watched him attack that little girl I just couldn't let it go... "

"How do you know about that?"

"Realm guardians? I knew a great vampire once. I learned so much from him, but he was killed many years ago. "

She watched him flick the blade, blood flying off, silver gleaming in moonlight. Was that a real silver blade?

"Seta Soujiro, who once knew a great vampire, who accidentally got involved in killing one... Coincidence?" she asked aloud.

He laughed, smiling brightly at her.

"I suppose it does sound a bit strange."

"It sounds a lot of strange."

She shifted suddenly, turning sensing another at the edge of their clearing. Probably drawn by the scent of blood on the breeze, it never failed.

"What is up with all the-" she barely got the words out, watching, amazed, as the human, Soujiro, leapt forward.

It was one perfect, fluid motion and a head went flying, blood spraying the area. Dark colored and thick with a foul odor - it tainted the entire clearing.

"Seta Soujiro, human, who knew a great vampire, who kicks major ass," she turned back to smile at him. "I'm Misao, current Guardian of this area. You look a little... eh, worn. Need a place to rest?"

He blinked, surprised.

"My house is near here. You might as well come on over - I don't get a lot of company, and especially not company who knows anything about what I do."

She smiled, feeling strangely at ease with the young man before her. He smiled in return and followed her, sheathing his weapon. She led him along to her house, tucked away in the far regions where no one ever ventured. He thanked her as he stepped inside and she waved it off.

"So you're what? Traveling? Out here?"

He sat down, clearly grateful being out of the soggy weather.

"Yeah. Since I lost my master I've just been wandering around. As it turns out though, I've fallen ill. I don't think I'll live much longer."

She sat forward looking at him. "I can't tell those kinds of things about people just by looking at them, but I always think I should... But you are kind of pale."

He smiled again.

"How about some tea? I have lots of kinds of tea around here."

"That would be fine, thank you very much. I appreciate your welcoming me."

She just flashed him a smile and toted toward her tea kettle.

* * *

"I can't believe I saw that."

"Please, get over your shock. Trust me, you saw it."

"But Okon... How can you be so calm about it? What we saw wasMAJOR... MAJOR, girl! Our master let that girl bite him, she let him BITE him, do I have to repeat it for you? Again? Our MASTER got BITTEN by a girl!"

"NO! And I don't care to hear about it anymore. What Aoshi-sama does in his spare time is none of our business. Obviously the girl is important to him, now we know why we're watching her."

"Actually," the other replied. "We don't."

Okon and Omasu were lounging in the upper branches of a tree in Misao's front lawn. Misao's house was surrounded by a thick covering of grass and several tall, old trees that looked like something straight out of a horror film.

"Who do you think that guy was she brought with her? Maybe she's cheating on Aoshi-sama!"

"Omasu, please! We don't know anything about their relationship other than the fact Aoshi-sama likes letting Misao-san bite him."

Omasu laughed. "He did like it, didn't he?"

"_Oh yeah, girl he loved it!_ Ever seen Aoshi shudder like that - his eyes closing, he was so beautiful. If I had those kinds of feelings for Aoshi-sama I'd be so jealous right now." Okon sighed.

"Imagine if all the women in love with Aoshi-sama knew about Misao-san and what he lets her do to him," Omasu snickered.

"Don't get any ideas, Okon. Now that we know Aoshi-sama has some kind of intimate connection with Misao-san we're obligated to protect that knowledge, you know that."

Okon slumped against the branch making the entire section shake and rustle. "I know, but that really sucks."

* * *

Okina eyed the report with curious eyes. His mouth curved into a curious smile. Something about the way the two girls had worded their report was causing him great interest.

It was almost as if...

No, that simply couldn't be.

He walked toward his superior's office, the paper in his hands. He didn't bother knocking finding it already open. Aoshi, it appeared, was on his way out.

"Aoshi-sama, a report for you."

"Just leave it on the desk," Aoshi replied, still scanning his bookshelf for something. When he didn't find it, he stepped past Okina toward the door.

"It's from Omasu and Okon."

He stopped at once. "They found something?"

"Makimachi-san it seems, brought a young man home with her.

"Name: unknown. Home: unknown. Age: mid-20's. He's been determined to be human, he's been at her house, staying with her for two days."

"Two days?" Aoshi repeated. "_In her house_?"

Okina nodded.

"I see."

On that note, he watched his Master turn and walk out.

Okina grinned.

* * *

"Oh, come on, that is so not true!" Misao argued, laughing. "I can't believe you think that."

"It is so true. I saw it myself."

"What a load of-" she stopped suddenly, her gaze shifting to the door, a knock followed moments later. "Crap, this isn't gonna be good," she muttered, stalking over to pull open the door.

The sight beyond didn't surprise her.

"Aoshi-sama," she greeted dully. "Come in."

He stepped past her without a word, moving directly toward Soujiro.

"Who are you?"

Misao blinked at the audacious act. Ignore her and immediately question -her- guest? She shoved the door closed and re-entered the room.

Soujiro stood, smiling pleasantly. "Seta Soujiro. I'm sorry, am I intruding here?"

Aoshi watched him, not immediately replying. Instead, he turned his gaze back to her.

"Misao - get me some tea."

She glared at him. "What am I, your servant now or something?"

"You may go," he replied, looking away from her.

Although grumbling, she left the room obediently. Once she was gone, Aoshi spoke once more.

"Are you sleeping with her?"

Soujiro's smile died, and he paled suddenly. "N-no, sir!"

"Why not?"

"E-eh?" Soujiro's expression ticked with nervousness.

"Misao is a virgin - relieve her of it and then leave here."

Soujiro's cheeks actually colored. "Isn't that a rather cold way to treat someone? I'm sure it would hurt her feelings and she seems so nice and she's been so welcoming to me and-"

"You, with your blood tainted as it is, must understand something of my culture and people. Virgins are warded - they can't be corrupted without death coming to the corruptor. Take her virginity and leave her, never see or touch her again and I will remove the taint of your blood."

Soujiro sighed heavily, clearly understanding what was at stake. He nodded slightly and Aoshi turned.

"If she cannot be convinced and you fail, I will release you peacefully. If you force her, I will just kill you."

Soujiro nodded, point already understood and watched the tall, dark vampire lord leave the residence.

If that dangerous person wanted Misao so badly - he wondered - did Misao herself know?

When she entered the room a few minutes later with a cup of tea, she looked more than royally pissed at seeing her guest gone.

"Did he leave?" she growled.

"I'm afraid so."

* * *

Author's note: Yes, it does drop off kinda suddenly there, but it picks up in this spot in chapter 3. I wanted to update something, so I figured this would do. 


	3. Part III

The Trap of Innocence

Part III

* * *

Misao growled in anger. "What a self absorbed bastard."

"Misao..."

She looked over at Soujiro, her angry expression dimming. Maybe it was the tone of his voice that caused her to pause in such a way.

"Huh?"

"That man there - do you know him?"

She nodded. "Yeah, I know him."

He knew who -_that_- man was. Shinomori Aoshi- Realm Leader. His association with the _great vampire_ he'd told Misao he'd known had shown him a photo of both Realm Leaders.

He seen Shinomori's face before in person though.

He never would have expected to be in such a situation.

But a vampire like that could save his life, could relieve him of the loyalty oaths he'd taken to Shishio, that with Shishio's subsequent death, were now killing him.

"May I ask you several personal questions?"

She came over to where he sat sliding the cup of tea toward him. "Sure, you want this?"

He smiled and accepted the tea. "Thank you."

He paused a moment, sipping the brew before continuing.

"Are you a virgin?" He knew this answer already, but he was going to use it as a lead.

Her cheeks reddened. "Why the hell do you want to know that?"

"Please trust me. It involves your friend, that man who visited a few minutes ago."

She frowned. "Yeah, so?" She refused to look at him while saying so, her eyes instead turned toward the doorway.

"Do you know about the powers virgins carry?"

She looked back. "I know they can protect me from being attacked by the vampire males. Something about it repels them."

Soujiro nodded. "Human virgins cannot engage in a physical intimacy with vampire males without killing the male. Since this doesn't apply to vampiric females, I must assume then you are half human?"

Misao nodded. "So? Why does this matter and what's it got to do with-" She trailed off abruptly.

"That man wants you," he stated simply.

She just stared at him as though he were lying straight to her face and she couldn't believe he would do such a thing to her.

"But because you're a virgin - he can't have you."

"Why are we talking about this?" she asked, looking uncomfortable.

"He's offered me something."

Soujiro sipped his tea to avoid immediately continuing.

Misao, however, didn't appreciate the pause. "Such as?"

"He has confirmed my suspicions about my illness and told me that he can cure me of it. But he will only do so in return for me taking your virginity."

"WHAT?"

"Because he can't do it himself... and I can."

She shot to her feet, slamming her fist on the table. "Lousy freaking-"

"Misao," Soujiro calmly interrupted. "Is your relationship with him bad?"

"Bad?" she paused. "No. Why?"

"I'm sorry, I was just curious. I apologize for asking such a thing of you. I should've realized you would not agree."

Soujiro's smile was bright and Misao relaxed. "Don't worry about it," she said.

He stood with his cup. "I'll just take this to your sink, if you don't mind."

"No, no I'll take it."

She reached for the cup, drawing herself nearer to him. When his hand gripped her one shoulder, she froze. He drew two fingers to her temple on the other side.

"Let the past five minutes, be forgotten."

His fingers glowed briefly. Her eyes turned blank and she blinked the memories away.

"What was I just doing?"

"Taking my cup to the sink," he replied with a small smile.

"Oh." She looked at the cup. "Right."

He had hoped for the direct approach to work, but she was apparently not going to be helpful on that front. He sighed. He would try it once more, with a much more subtle tone and take the route of seduction.

If she didn't respond, he would go his ways from her peacefully. He would not attempt to force her and erase her memory - his memory "gift" was an ill side-effect of his current condition and couldn't be used without at least some willingness to leave a memory from the other person.

It hadn't always been like that, but since Shishio was no longer around his "power" was not really a "power" anymore, but a "sometimes convenience".

* * *

Aoshi met dawn uneasily, his conscience warring with his desire. No matter how he wanted her, he couldn't have her. But that boy, Soujiro, could.

Seta Soujiro had been one of the right hand men of Shisho's rebellion, a sworn solider of the maniac. He remembered the boy's empty smile.

Then there was Hannya, another _giant _problem.

It did not seem he would be able to convince his friend to let him have the girl and if he couldn't do away with her virginity by some method other than himself, which was impossible, he wouldn't have much use for her anyway, except to tease himself.

He tried to quell the possessive homicidal thoughts, the desire he had to simply rip the boy in half if he dared to touch her, but it couldn't be. He couldn't go back on his own terms.

He couldn't have Misao while she was still in her "condition", something he forgot from time to time. He looked up when his door opened and Hannya stepped in.

"Good morning, Aoshi-sama."

Aoshi replied automatically, wondering at the sudden appearance of his longtime friend. Hannya was not one for dropping by his secluded stronghold often, and tended to avoid it if possible.

"Something bothering you?" Aoshi inquired, looking back toward his desk.

"I have heard rumors about one Kamatari, wandering about killing off Saitou's men."

"..." Aoshi just listened.

"Is it so?" Hannya pressed.

"To my knowledge, Kamatari's presence is unconfirmed."

"But you think he's there?" Hannya inquired, not willing to leave the topic. "Wandering the border territories?"

"It is believed to be so, yes."

Hannya's silence revealed nothing but when he bowed and made to leave, Aoshi called him back. "Is there nothing I can do to change your mind about Misao?"

"She is not suitable for you, Aoshi-sama. What do you know of her, outside of your lust for her?"

"You mean to say to me that you will not approve of my directing attentions to her unless I prove to you, I have an interest beyond sex? Am I known for being so shallow?"

"You are a man with little patience for women beyond the physical, Aoshi-sama and your history speaks for itself. You have never, in my time with you, had a serious relationship with a woman, and human women have been nothing but passing sexual partners."

Aoshi turned a sharp glance in his friend's direction. "Misao is not-"

"She is half human," Hannya interrupted. "Have you thought of it? If your interest in her _is _beyond the physical and you wanted her for your mate - hypothetically, and brought her here to live with you... Would it work? Would she feel uneasy? Would she, a half-breed, be _welcomed _here?"

"I have considered such things."

"I do not doubt it. But do you know how Misao feels about our race? She is young and exudes innocence, but the girl is troubled. A boiling hatred lurks beneath that pretty smile -maybe you should find out more about her."

He watched his friend leave and the moment he was gone, Aoshi stood. Such troubling thoughts...

So early...

* * *

Misao giggled as Soujiro's third attempt to juggle bannanas failed.

"You're an idiot," she decided watching him pick up the bruised fruit.

He half-smiled at her and glanced at the heavily bruised produce before setting it aside. "Sorry, I think I might have ruined them."

She shrugged it off. "I'll make bread or something. I learned how to make it from my former guardian. Surprised me, I thought banana bread sounded gross."

Soujiro neared plopping himself down onto the floor cushion across from where Misao sat on the other side of the little table.

"Who was your former guardian? If you do not mind."

She looked up, her lips turned down. "She was a good person at heart, I miss her."

"She wasn't related to you?"

"No, we parted a long time ago."

"Why?"

Misao looked away, shaking her head negatively. "It was stormy, fitting I suppose, when my mother stumbled into the shrine yard where Kisa-sensei was the head miko. She was a drunk, a whore from a local brothel. She handed me over to Kisa-sensei telling her I was possessed by a demon because I had bitten her and I think a couple of others, drawing blood.

"Kisa-sensei said my mother fled the moment I was out of her arms in fright. She kept me there at the shrine, she bound my ankles and wrists and neck with holy charms to control my ... problems."

"A problem? Is that what she called it?"

"She always said I needed to control my little 'accidents' and not to let my bad blood get the best of me and then in the same breath she would say she wouldn't be surprised if I couldn't, I was only a half-breed."

Soujiro frowned. "She was hard on you."

"I don't know. A miko is a miko I guess. And what's worse to a miko than something she views as 'bad'? But controlling the kind of thirst I have is impossible. The seals help, but they can't control what my body wants. So I had to sneak away from the shrine at least once a month to keep from biting people randomly."

"How did you come to be a guardian?"

"Accident. I have a bad temper and I attacked a guy much stronger than me. I was rescued by another guy stronger than me - turned out to be my 'father'. He arranged for me to do this. It wasn't my idea. Aoshi-sama said it was temporary... I don't know what he means by that. I'm not sure I want to find out really."

The house was neat and clean and virtually dustless. She'd spent much of the previous night cleaning everything she could get her hands on. Now, today she was feeling just as restless.

"Sad though... I hear some parents ask their children what their goals are, what they want to be in life... I hear others argue about the child not wanting to inherit the family business and things like that. I wonder a lot if they have any idea how much their lives are _worth_, short as they are, in the long run.

"Life has value simply because there's so little of it. If you exist for fifteen centuries there's just… " she trailed off.

With that incomplete melancholy thought, she stood and disappeared into her kitchen.

* * *

The human world was not a place he much liked to venture. The bright lights and bustling noises served more to annoy him than to entrance him. He liked the red rimmed skies of his own domain and the quiet shuffling of slippered feet on old, traditional floors.

He didn't like the grungy clothes and loud mouths and smacking of gum, nor did he have any appreciation for much of the modern world's "technology". It was far more intrusive to him than helpful.

As he stepped beyond the gateway he glanced about, the black fabrics of his clothes flowing around his frame. This gate opened onto a non-populated back street, but he could already hear the noisy crowd ahead.

The gateways to his world were another interesting thing. The "border lands" were continuous but not porous. One could only pass through at certain, guarded "gateways", often located in the strangest of places.

With the simple touch of the palm on the gateway "locks", it was quite possible to fall right in. It was not uncommon for a human to stumble past a gateway and become lunch for the guard on the other side.

No one who errantly discovered his "world" returned.

As he made his way up the alley toward the sidewalk, he encountered a watch salesman on the corner. He glanced at the human man once and continued on, ignoring the sales pitch streaming from thin lips.

He glided through the crowds with ease, his presence causing somewhat of a feeling of awe, as others instinctively moved away.

His destination was already formed clearly in his mind. He wanted to see the only social center that drew her.

The only place, as of yet, he knew her to go, to mingle among the humans.

The Kamiya Dojo.

He found it on a side street with considerably less traffic than the one he'd entered onto from the gate way at least three streets over. His long legs and quick strides had scaled the distance swiftly.

The windows were glass and wide, and the doors the same. He saw nothing within but a small secretarial desk and a woman seated at it.

He pulled open the door and stepped inside.

It seemed within the span of miles that he could sense her, the girl who had fire burning in her eyes... his little hunter... the girl who had coaxed him into spying at her bedroom windows for weeks on end...

All because of a strange encounter at a whore house...

Curiously, he had yet to return to the Aquis since then.

"Can I help you, Sir?"

The girl at the desk was bright eyed and completely human. The sound of her blood pulsing through her heart was curiously unappealing.

"What kind of services does this gym offer?"

She smiled at him brightly and began to rattle off a list of things that slipped past his ears.

He waited, feeling her, Misao... She was here on these very grounds. Glancing once at the receptionist, he was certain she would not answer questions about Misao, even if she did acknowledge the girl was even a student here and she certainly wouldn't permit him to see her.

Misao masqueraded as a school girl, did she not?

"Would it be acceptable for me to be assigned an escort for a tour of your facility?" he inquired smoothly, his lips curving no smile, but soft and flat, unresponsive to her continued brilliance.

"Of course," she agreed. "I can show you around."

If the girl was trying to flirt with him, he hadn't noticed. She rose, tugging down her knee-length straight lined skirt modestly. If it was actually to straighten the garment or get his attention, he didn't bother wondering, he glanced away.

Misao was beyond this wall...

Ruler of the House of Shinomori he was, but that didn't empower him with the ability to see through walls or read minds, no matter how much he may have liked such a skill.

The woman whose name he failed to catch, young woman, he corrected, ushered him beyond the large white wall. It led to a simple, narrow hall lined with glass windows with blinds on the inside. Some of the rooms were darkened, others were lit and he could see students all moving in unison obeying the word of the instructor at the front.

The young lady continued to speak, a cascade of hair flowing down her back held in place by an ornately colored ribbon. Her eyes sparkled as she spoke of the place, obviously pride-fully.

As she led him further down the hall, one of the doors opened.

"Shut up, weasel girl, you're just running at the mouth again!"

"Who're you calling 'weasel girl'?"

He turned his eyes up at her voice coming upon the little group. As they neared all the others turned toward them and a silence fell over them as they spotted him with the young woman.

They greeted her with the ease of familiarity, but Misao, he noted went stone silent, staring at him from beside a tall, lanky man with spiky hair. Was he the one who had called her "weasel girl"? What an interesting nickname.

"Misao," he greeted, but it sounded more like a summons to his ears.

She peered around the male beside her and half-smiled. "Hello, Aoshi-sama."

The others took new notice of him at the girl's formal address. "Misao, is this a friend of yours?" The escort, Kaoru he realized now, tentatively asked, her eyes relaying her curiosity.

Misao nodded. "Sort of. Aoshi-sama is..."

"A family friend," he filled in, glancing over her companions. They appeared harmless enough.

"Right," Misao agreed, looking relieved momentarily. "Anyway... I gotta go. I'll see you guy's later, okay?"

She didn't give them a chance to agree; she stepped past them airily and grabbed Aoshi's hand. He glanced at his escort, thanked her, and allowed Misao to tug him out of the building.

Once in the street, she turned an accusatory glare toward him. "What are you doing here? Don't you have some awesome, House Leader work to be doing or something?"

He didn't bother himself with an answer. "What do you go there for? Surely there is nothing a paltry human school can teach you."

Despite the low traffic, he slipped his hand about her wrist and pulled her along, walking toward even less populated areas. If he remembered this place correctly there was an alleyway that led to another street that led to the street by the one that branched off toward a graveyard.

Convoluted, certainly, but he was sure he knew where he was. He never forgot a place once he'd walked it.

Misao tottered along beside him. "I happen to like it there, excuse me for wanting a life."

"Among humans? What do they offer you?"

"What do you?" she countered and he stopped midway down a narrow, darkened alley. The air was musty here, dank…

"I?" he asked, turning glowing eyes toward her. He moved toward her, crowding her against the dusty cement wall and she flattened herself back against it as though seeing the predator he was for the first time.

His eyes glowed, teeth glinting, he checked a growl.

Him?

What was _he_ offering her?

Who was this girl to say such things to him? Why was he here making such a fuss? What had changed in him to cause this? Why?

Some strange encounter at his favorite haunt? Why did that warrant all this attention? Why did he leave his residence, his peaceful residence to stalk her about the human world, a place he detested so fervently?

Why did he waste the hours of his staff to keep tabs on her?

What for?

What was the ultimate goal?

Startled at the sudden, intricate clarity of the situation he moved back from her as much as the tight walls would allow and then turned his back to her. Without a word further, he continued on to the end of the alleyway, and vanished.

She hadn't even started to follow him.

Being Realm Leader gave him one indefinable power the others of his kind didn't have, the ability to bypass all gates. He went from his secluded stronghold to the human world without ever passing a guardian.

As he returned to his gated mansion, he wondered, how did Hannya, one without approval, continue to visit and watch over Misao when she lived on the other side of the barriers?

The halls were quiet, as always, no one dared disturb the Leader of the House of Shinomori, if he was within or not. He spotted Okina flirting with a young female and saw the old man pinch her behind and heard the girl's surprised squeak as she whirled around to face him and then froze.

She immediately bowed low, averting her eyes. "Aoshi-sama…"

Okina turned back, his lecherous grin vanishing as he bowed respectfully. "Aoshi-sama."

"Call Omasu and Okon back, their assignment is over."

The old man blinked at the curt order, merely watching as Aoshi turned just as quickly and left him there alone with the servant.

Who was she to deserve such attention from him?

He did not need this girl.

He didn't want to be troubled in this fashion. Troubled and questioned and… Let her live her ungrateful life on the edge of human society, let her suffer as she wanted, who was he to stoop to pull her from her gutter?

Why was he suddenly so bitter about it all?

He opened the door to his office and slid the door closed irritably. The room was tidy and perfect, just as he'd left it. Just as he'd walked out it the night he'd gone to visit the Aquis, the night he'd first laid eyes upon the little guardian.

He settled himself at his desk, reaching for the nearest book. He kept a stack of unfinished books in a drawer on the left. As he flipped open to the last unread page, there came a knock. Aoshi recognized the aura as Okina and called for the man to enter.

"Aoshi-sama, Omasu and Okon have been informed. They will return within the next few hours, do you require a final report?"

"No." He didn't even look up. "Send for Beshimi; have him patrol the border for that rebel, Kamatari. Once he is spotted, have Hannya tend to the matter."

"As you like. Do you wish him captured?"

"Kill him," Aoshi ordered voice completely void of emotion.

Okina cast him one final, curious glance and left him. "As you wish, Aoshi-sama." With that, the door slid closed once more.

So leave her to her own devices, he thought, turning his attention to his book. He would not visit her again.

* * *

Omasu yawned. "What a trip. I'm surprised we're back so quickly."

Okon nodded. "I'm glad. I'm not much for the shoddy camping trips. I like it when _others _do the spying."

As they stepped within the mansion, the scent of candles drifted toward their noses. The front lounge was lit with soft candlelight, an indicator Okina intended to spend the night reading. Usually an indicator he had been rejected by his latest flame.

"You're late."

They both looked up as the old man appeared, in his hands a book, a prim set of glasses perched on the end of his nose. He looked so…

They laughed.

He looked so… Silly.

"How did your trip go?" he asked, setting aside his book for the moment, motioning to them he wanted them to stay.

The girls exchanged curious glances. For them to give debriefing reports to anyone but Aoshi-sama when _he _had sent them out was rare.

"Okay."

"Aoshi-sama has said he doesn't wish a report from you. But tell me… This girl you were monitoring, did you notice anything unusual about her?"

The girls exchanged another glance. "Um… No?"

"No?" he asked and then waved a hand betwee them. "What was that? That look there?"

"Don't ask us that, we took this mission for Aoshi-sama, if we were to say anything about something he did, we would be breaking a confidence."

Okina's brows drew down curiously. "So… There is something there, then?" He nodded. "She's a… personal friend?"

Omasu paused. "I wouldn't call her a … friend… exactly."

"So she's more than a friend?"

Both nodded. "Oh, yes."

Okina digested this information silently. "Did anything unusual happen before you were recalled?"

Okon cleared her throat. "I was following her today. She went into town, which seems to be her usual schedule, and spent some time at a place called 'Kamiya's Dojo'. While I watched the place from across the street, Aoshi-sama appeared and went inside also. When he emerged, they spoke briefly and then he turned and started leading her away.

"I followed them up to an alleyway where she said something that seemed to make him angry because he got really close like he was going to bite her. But then he stepped away and walked to the end and left her there by herself.

"She stayed there for a couple of minutes, looking like she was surprised or startled… I almost want to say frightened but she didn't exactly look afraid. Then she slowly moved away, once she reached the end of the alley she started to run. We went back to the house where she went in, slamming the door and Omasu told me then were done and that's all. We left."

Okina nodded and waved them away.

They took a look back at him as they wandered away, both glad to be back.

"What do you think happened?" Omasu whispered.

"I don't know. Looks bad, doesn't it?

Omasu nodded.

* * *

Misao sat at her table glumly. Soujiro had gone. Where, she couldn't even begin to guess, but all his things were gone. Maybe he'd gone out for something, maybe he'd just left. He certainly hadn't left her a note or anything.

People could be so inconsiderate, she thought off-handedly.

She was confused.

What had happened earlier?

What had she said to upset him, Aoshi-sama, so greatly?

It wasn't uncommon for her mouth to get ahead of her. It was something she fairly often did, she and Sano spent all of their time arguing.

Still, she had always thought, well, in the short period she'd known him he seemed to have such an unshakable temper. He was nothing like her and…

She sighed.

Why was she so disappointed?

The heavy sense of finality to the whole thing wasn't something lost on her. This was what Hannya had wanted from the very first. For Aoshi-sama to leave her alone and for her to return to her hum-drum boring old half-life.

He was another problem, when she chose to think about it. "Hannya", a late addition to her life. She couldn't quite bring herself to call him "father" or any variation thereof. To her, he wasn't a father, not really. She hadn't had one; only women lived at her mountain home.

The only glimpses she'd even had of males while growing up had been when the occasional monk who had stopped by on his travels. It wasn't until she got old enough and started wandering off the grounds into the little villages that she'd met up with boys.

Since they had met some years ago Hannya been popping up with more frequency. Whether he thought he bore some responsibility for her or something, she couldn't be sure. She didn't want to think about it most times because it reminded her how long she'd been doing this.

It reminded her that this young body and this young face and young voice were all lies…

She lied to those around her. She lied to those she called friends. She lied, most importantly, to herself.

Some days she was 16 - in her head, in her actions. Some days, she felt like a spinster, the old woman who'd never married and had no one, not even family.

With an irritable glare she stomped upstairs toward her room and began stripping off her day attire angrily. She yanked her hunting uniform from a metal hanger, causing it to clang loudly against the ceiling of the armoire. Pulling it on, she grabbed her weapons and headed out.

She needed to think.

She needed to hunt.

* * *

The quiet, pleasing atmosphere of the Aquis lulled him into a state of mute satisfaction. He walked along silently, his head above those who he mingled amongst as he moved toward the stairs. The light, airy twinkling of the ladies with instruments as they entertained the visitors met his ears pleasantly.

Only the scent of alcohol tainted his favorite sanctuary.

He walked toward the back. The entryway to the upstairs rooms was guarded. Without a word or a glance from or to the guard, Aoshi slipped past the decorative curtain and ascended the stairs.

More music drifted through the open spaces.

The moment his foot touched the landing, a woman slipped her arms around his side.

"Good evening, Aoshi-sama…" she purred.

The woman bearing naked shoulders and an ample depth of cleavage smiled slyly at him.

"You've been gone longer than usual…" she murmured her voice soft.

He didn't reply. "Anyone new, Yumi?"

He used her name infrequently, usually when preceding a request.

"New?" she paused. "There is one girl. Small, quiet… Rather shy, I think. Her name is Kioko."

He didn't bother much over names, he instead, sat himself at a screened booth prepared for him and waited for his company and his tea.

It had been six days since he'd left the girl in that alley.

The girl – he no longer used _her _name.

He had, in that time, tried to pinpoint exactly what had attracted him to the girl, but could not. He wondered, as he contemplated, if Hannya had been correct in declaring it a mere physical attraction.

He pushed the matter aside for at least the millionth time in six short days. He could not, despite himself, forget about her.

He had not seen Hannya, nor had he heard of Beshimi spotting anyone along the border territories. Saitou had been absent also.

It was though his entire schedule had been… cleared.

His companion for the night arrived, dressed in layers of kimonos, and multitudes of shades. Her expression was hidden behind a silk fan, her hair, long and loose tumbled free over her kimono.

"Good evening, sir."

He grunted in response.

She sat across from him, another behind her bore a tea tray that was placed upon the table. For tonight, he would linger and listen to the woman prattle at him. It was the sound of her voice, not the words themselves, he was interested in. The actual messages she relayed were lost, he caught only the melodious tinkling sound…

For hours, he sat back, his eyes half closed listening to her speak. She seemed never to tire of topics. She could have spoken to him of purple fish and he wouldn't have blinked at the thought.

He sipped the tea slowly, enjoying the heat of the cup against his cold hands far more than he liked of the liquid itself.

He happened, in one of his moments of lucidity, to hear her mention a "flute". At his petition, she slipped it from the folds of her garment and raised the instrument to her lips and began to play.

Her hands were small and pretty, very dainty in fashion. They were not the hands of a hunter. Her skin radiated health, her lips were small and inviting, bright with color. She was a doll, painted and dressed for customers, but beneath that…

This girl was human, bound to the mortal coil, living, breathing… simply being.

She was as he saw her before him. A creature of flesh and blood and pulsing with life, a creature able to make music, a creature of happiness and sadness; she was a human creature.

One that was, in essence, unlike himself.

Who then was she? The other girl? The girl whose name he denied.

If she were not spun, not caught in the spidery web of humanity, and not held taut in the thickened cords of the near immortality his own clans offered, what was she?

Where did she lie?

Where did _her future_ lie?

From what coils did she spring forth and to what coils did she retire?

He nearly growled at his own inability to concentrate.

After all, what did he know of this girl?

What did he even know of her parentage? He'd heard nothing but rumors.

Hannya had never spoken to him of it.

What did he know?

Why did he even care?

Again, a frosty sweep of indifference spread over him. He would think of it no further.

He motioned toward the woman. He tired of her chatter.

He was not disillusioned about why he'd come here, to the Aquis, this evening. He had come to forget.

To replay that evening the way it _should've_ gone, to see it over with fresh eyes and forget the fact he'd found another, one who didn't belong here and become entranced by her.

He'd come to relive, a vain attempt to sweep away that which had already tainted his memory.

Before she had even slipped the tie of her kimono, letting the fabric hang, teasing him with glances of flesh beneath, he knew it would fail, but he beckoned her forth.

If he couldn't have his remembrance or his former inner peace, he was not going to deny himself his pleasure.

**That** girl…

He reached for his escort, pulling her into his lap.

That **other** girl… the girl whose name he wouldn't use… She couldn't be.

As his hands slid within the folds of the layered garment, he thought of it.

That other girl… She _couldn't be_ his lover.

* * *

The sun rose to greet the maidens of the Four Hill Shrine, shining down upon them as they emerged from the humble temple. The grounds were wide and spacious surrounded by low built stone walls about the perimeter.

The women were dressed alike, in the red and white miko garb that separated them from the village peasants. They scattered over the courtyard, some with baskets of laundry, others ready with bows in their hands as they headed out to hunt, still even more with brooms, prepared to sweep the pathways.

Hannya stared into the place from the gate with a feeling of semi-fascination. In all his years, he'd never been interested enough to step foot upon human holy grounds. He knew not the power extents of monks and mikos and wards, though he'd heard much about them.

Misao had been raised at this place? He was almost in disbelief at the thought. How as it possible?

This strict holy place?

He couldn't imagine how she must've suffered in such a dismal environment. How she must have been looked down upon and trodden over…

The wounds he was convinced she must have, deep within, from her years of childhood torment at this shrine. Wounds that lay on the inside, the ones that caused her to turn on those of her own kind with such viciousness she might appear wild…

A place where a vampire child, as she had been, was a demon, an unnatural, the last conceivable place for a child of her parentage should've been welcomed. Or even survived…

And yet…

In a shrine full of holy women, Misao **_had_** remained alive. They had not killed her or cast her out. It was a powerful, inescapable fact.

How was this so?

To what end had Misao left this place alive? To what purpose had she been reared here? What silly nonsense they her ears been sullied with, tainting her mind and hindering her ability to live, draining her ability to be peaceful with herself and her wants and needs and base desires…

Once upon a time, he hadn't cared. In the distant regions of his mind, knowledge of Misao's existence had lived, flourished and occasionally sparked a curious thought. Until the midnight encounter on the streets, he'd never found himself searching for her.

He'd never sought her.

He'd never been curious enough to drag himself into the effort of locating his only child.

He'd never done anything before now and it had been many years.

Many.

And now that he did know of her, what brought him to Misao's childhood home? He could not help but ask himself these questions.

Yet in the same corners of his memory where Misao had lurked for so many years he recalled his own words to his leader, his friend.

_"…do you know how Misao feels about our race? She is young and exudes innocence, but the girl is troubled. A boiling hatred lurks beneath that pretty smile -maybe you should find out more about her." _

And Hannya, unwilling to be at odds with his conscience and his friend, was here to do just what he had accused Aoshi of _not _doing.

Who was Misao?

What had these people taught her?

What, he wondered, had _they_ **_made_** her into?

Across the sweeping courtyard, he spotted one, an older miko, standing perfectly still. She was looking around, but he knew she was watching him, discreetly, from her place by the temple building.

Did she wonder, who was this stranger lurking at her gate?

There was no direction to go but forward. He would not leave here without his answers…

* * *

End chapter 3

Angela6060: Many questions, the Hannya thing I think was explained in this chapter, if not, it appears elsewhere. As for feelings, yeah, those are short. They'll show up at some point too, but there are fics where Aoshi treats Misao very badly, I hadn't considered this one of them though. Maybe it's a matter of perception.

Happyangel123: All will be revealed in time... I haven't really worked out the Soujiro thing, they aren't really friends, they just met. Maybe they'll become friends though, not sure.

Thanks for reviewing all, see you around.


	4. Part IV

**The** **Trap of Innocence**

**Part IV**

* * *

He stepped forward, past the gate, silently fearing some powerful wards would shock and paralyze him, but no such thing happened.

The pathway was set in grayish stone and led up to a modest building. There was a woman there. Elderly, wearing the red and white attire of a priestess, her thin lips were pressed into a thin line. She watched him cautiously but made no moves. He would bet she held no weapon. Staring back at her from behind the thick plate of his ivory mask, he decided to approach. She waited patiently, greeting him when he came to face her. "Good afternoon, traveler."

"This is the Four Hills Shrine, is it not?" he asked, turning his eyes from her to the area once more before looking back to her.

"It is."

Her voice was soft but held a strong undertone to it. This was not the same group of priestesses that Misao obtained her beads from. This could not be that place, the feeling was all wrong. What was this place and more importantly, he wondered, what importance did it hold for Misao?

Before, when the priestess had come with him to replace Misao's seals it had been the priestess that found and approached _him_, and not the other way around. How that had come about, he hadn't quite known and hadn't quite cared, but now he was curious.

"Do you happen to know of a Makimachi Misao?"

The woman blinked; her astonishment apparent upon her rounded face for several seconds. "I… Yes. I've heard of her, of course. She's … somewhat of a legend around here. But it's been ages, it seems, since the girl herself was last seen."

"I see," he replied sedately. This young woman had never known Misao, he realized regretfully. He did not know how long it had been since Misao had left this shrine. "But this is the place she lived?"

"Oh, yes, this is it. Kisa one of our most powerful adopted her years and years ago. But Kisa has been dead 75 years this year. The tale of Kisa and the baby Misao is the most recited story about these grounds."

"75 years…" he murmured softly, in awe. Had it been so long since she'd been on her own? She had not been working for Shikijou even half that time and she appeared so young. Where, he wondered, had she been all this time?

He allowed her bright, wide eyes and small face to deceive him. He willfully forgot Misao was a _woman_ masquerading as a young teenager.

Had it really been so long?

It certainly explained why he couldn't remember much of Misao's conception or the woman herself for that matter, or even what had happened. He knew Misao was _his_ child, but little else other than that.

75 years was a long time for his memory.

"And she left?"

"Misao?" The woman questioned and then paused. "No one really knows. Kisa fell ill and collapsed gathering herbs. She was brought back here, delirious with fever. It is said Misao stayed with her the whole time, but Kisa wasn't herself and cast Misao off… Calling her hurtful names. But to the very end, Misao stayed. When morning came, Kisa was found peacefully in her bed, a bouquet of flowers between her clasped fingers, and Misao herself, was gone."

"Then this Kisa was Misao's guardian?" A woman 75 years dead would yield no answers.

"Yes, she would have been in charge of Misao."

"Did she leave anything?"

The woman shook her head. "If anything remains of Misao it has long been forgotten and picked up by another. Here among the shrine there is little personal property, anything she left behind would have been picked up by one of the priestesses and used and then eventually passed around with no thought of who owned it. If you are referring to writings or anything of that sort, no; there is nothing."

He nodded; he had expected such an answer. Misao did not seem the type to keep diaries and journals, and if she had, she would not keep them at a shrine. Her own natural enemies had adopted her. The very thought of it still amazed him.

"Are you familiar with the story?" she asked.

"Something of it. It was vague," he replied. "She speaks little to me about such things."

The woman blinked in surprise, clearly wondering if he meant "she" to be Misao herself.

"Oh?"

He turned away. "With regard is this story met? What is Misao? The demon child? The outcast? The half-breed?"

"No, of course not," she shook her head, a motion lost on the man who wasn't looking at her. If she was surprised by Hannya asking about what had made Misao unusual, different, she didn't so much as blink. Obviously the woman knew Misao was not _normal _with her lack of reaction to the question.

"All accounts seem to indicate that Misao was family here. Kisa said that it was no fault of Misao's where she had come from – but even so, she had much difficulty reconciling the girl's questionable parentage and our beliefs here. But she loved her as a daughter and could never order any harm come to her."

"So that is how she survived…" he murmured to himself.

**_"A shrine?" _**

Hannya and the priestess both looked up to see a tall, darkly clothed man rise from the steps as though appearing from the dust coming closer. Aoshi moved slowly, smoothly, body gliding. With the definite grace of a hunter he approached them and the priestess's hands trembled faintly in response.

"Is this from where Misao comes? How inappropriate," Aoshi murmured, stepping over the smooth stone tiles on the ground. "You gave Misao to a shrine?"

"It was no action of my own – Misao's mother left her here," Hannya replied, glancing about. "I cannot imagine her running about a shrine yard in youth, myself."

"She is not made for such things."

Hannya and Aoshi shared a stare. "Such things, Aoshi-sama? Misao was safe because she spent her childhood here and not among the others where she could be hunted and maimed…"

"Do you think this group of women with their reviling, inaccurate views of us would do her any great good? She has sentenced herself to a half life, she won't hunt, she barely lives."

The priestess remained quiet in her silent awe, just watching.

"I do not wish to argue with you over it, Aoshi-sama, what is done, is done," Hannya concluded, turning back to face the priestess.

"You speak of her as though you know her..." The woman spoke, her voice laced with something akin to astonishment.

"Know her?" Hannya repeated his voice a low timbre, almost hauntingly melodic. "This person you speak of is my child." From behind the plated white mask he wore, the eye slits glowed like fiery embers and he vanished, fading slowly out of sight.

Aoshi remained staring at the woman whose mouth had dropped open as though a ghost had appeared and slipped a soft kiss across her lips leaving trails of ice down her spine.

"You speak of 'bad things' between Kisa and Misao and parentage. Tell me, priestess, what do you think Misao is?"

She turned her eyes toward him, and he watched her swallow nervously as though suddenly aware she was in grave danger.

"The stories say she was half a demon - an otherworldly creature left at our doorstep by a desperate mother."

"Half a demon?" he murmured. "A twisted creature of evil?"

He half turned away, intent upon leaving when something else occurred to him.

"She hasn't returned to this shrine in all these years?"

"No one even knew she still lived... It's been so long, no one really thought the girl still lived."

He turned the rest of the way about and made his way to the torii entrance. He glanced at the holy grounds with impersonal interest. Clean air was about all the good he'd ever found at such places.

"Excuse me for being so bold..." She started and paused when he stopped walking to listen, but didn't glance back at her. "Would you be kind enough to ask her to visit us?"

He turned his head, his impassive stare tinted with shades of annoyance. "You, who calls me and those who answer to me 'demons', would be so bold as to speak requests?"

Before the woman could retort he had vanished. The priestess frowned and walked slowly back to the shrine. Inside, she diverted off the man hall and stepped into a small office. There, she uncapped an ink bottle and scrolled a quick message. Allowing it to dry, she replaced her materials and then grabbed the slip of paper on her way out heading further down the hall toward the fire room.

Inside, she kneeled before the fire pit and folded the paper daintily between her fingers. Lowering her head in prayer, she chanted, holding out the paper. It sprang to life, dancing in her fingers, leaping from her open palm into the flames where it vanished in a spidery trail of smoke.

* * *

A girl could be a lot of things, she supposed, staring out over the river. She was a girl, and by definition, she could be a lot of things too. But limiting factors well... limited her.

She was a girl, but she was half a monster, too.

Half of something that led to humans cowering in fear at the sight of her or in anger. Sometimes she'd fancied being "at home" and hearing the shouts of a crowd coming to lay siege upon her with sticks and pitchforks and torches...

She really read too many books.

She didn't have much else to do sometimes. Before she'd been as a Guardian she'd been a wanderer, after she left the shrine, of course. She loved that shrine, she would love to go back, to wake at dawn and help the priestesses with their work, to practice her archery...

She couldn't.

A creature such as herself didn't belong in a place like that. She would never belong there. She was half a demon - half evil, by definition.

Wasn't everything defined by something?

She sighed despairingly. She was through with this. With this job, with this life... She would wander again, and maybe she'd find somewhere she could belong.

At least, that's what she'd been planning, as she stepped away from the river's edge and turned south she met calm eyes and a simple smile.

Soujiro.

"Are you going somewhere?" he asked.

She had no bag, no packages, nothing on her that would indicate that she'd been planning any such thing and yet...

'Who was this guy?' she wondered.

"No," she lied.

So easy to lie...

"I'm glad. I went out for a couple of days, I'm sorry I didn't leave you a note. I couldn't find anything to write with and I thought it would be rude of me to hunt around your residence."

She nodded numbly.

As she stared at him she found herself unable to care whom he was. Not really. This person knew who _she_ was, understood her, to an extent.

"And you're back now?" she asked.

He paused, his smile faltering. "I... did not mean to impose upon you."

She shook her head. "You're not bothering me," she absently replied.

"Ah, if that's the case, if you would..." He bowed politely. "Would you be so kind as to allow me to stay with you a few more weeks?"

She blinked. "Weeks?" she spoke, before she could snap her mouth closed.

"I'm sorry. It was wrong of me to ask-"

"Nah," she waved her hand at him dismissively. "You can stay as long as you want to."

She wondered if she fully realized what she was getting herself into. She probably didn't.

With a sigh she turned on her heel and headed back. Always things to be done.

She had made an arrangement in the past with a shrine, always being drawn to the dangerous holy grounds after reading a book about vampires. Although it appeared that nearly everything she'd read about them in books had been false, she'd been intrigued by the idea of "seals".

The first priestess she'd encountered had been frightened and tried to warn her away. Misao had escaped without fighting or injuring the woman and had gone on to another shrine.

She was luckier the next time, refining her approach and not simple outright asking. She had to field her questions first, gently leading the priestess without trying to give too much away. It had been harder than it sounded.

The priestess, however, once realizing it was a request and not an inquiry had looked startled. Thankfully, the woman hadn't recoiled, but nodded in understanding.

After all, Misao thought, she'd been asking to _restrain_ her desires not _increase_ them.

The priestess had agreed and at the end of that fateful day she'd left the shrine grounds with five wards, two around her wrists, two around her ankles and one around her neck.

Sometimes, when she bathed, she felt like a prisoner, trapped because she couldn't ever take them off. They crackled when she tried to touch them.

Despite the slight discomfort they afforded her, she was glad of it.

Blood urges were strong, they pulsed along the length of her veins and made her temples throb. At times like those her thinking became erratic and she did dangerous things.

She sighed.

She headed along the woodland path she knew so well. Soujiro followed along behind her, his footsteps quiet. Perhaps she should worry about that guy?

Maybe he would turn on her as well?

* * *

Aoshi watched Okina passively, the man's words floating by his ears. The girl on the other end of the flirtations giggled cutely and tried to swat the old man away.

_He_ had been completely overlooked. They continued to carry on like juveniles for several minutes before Aoshi got truly annoyed at the sight.

Reaching over his desk, he flicked the small tray of ink brushes to the floor. It clattered loudly, brushes rolling this way and that way and the two flirting idiots in front of him straightened, suddenly realizing they weren't alone in the room.

Okina looked far less sheepish than he should have, but the nameless servant girl had gone pale. Already she was on her knees apologizing and picking up the brushes. Once the task was done she nearly begged to be released from the room and he waved her away.

"You," he pointed at Okina. "Get out."

Okina paused, not moving toward the doorway. "Is there something bothering you Aoshi-sama?"

"Remove yourself."

The man hesitated and then quietly left the room leaving Aoshi with the peace he'd desired.

He didn't want to be loitering about here thinking about -her-.

Irritating woman...

He knew what the problem was.

He didn't have enough work to do.

* * *

She had an eerie feeling. Like something was watching her, something that didn't necessarily have evil intentions… just… _intentions._ Unknown intentions were always bad. Being without knowledge always equaled fear.

"Do you want me to prepare you some tea?" Soujiro asked.

She half turned. "No. I'm tired of tea for right now, maybe some cocoa. No… nothing."

She walked past him and sat herself down at the table.

"Would you bring me over a match? I want to smell this candle you brought."

He'd gotten it that very day earlier in his shopping trip; the label called it "citrus blossom."

He brought over a pack of matches and headed back to the kitchen without comment. She'd gotten used to his occasional silences. She struck the match and lit the candle watching the flame flicker and dance.

The eerie feeling returned abruptly. Her eyes widened as the flame grew taller, over the edge of the glass and then turned red.

A tiny slip of paper emerged and fell onto the tabletop, the edges singed. A … paper crane?

Misao reached for it, but the paper mysteriously shifted, unfolding itself. A message, short and stark in the black ink made her heart pound in her chest.

**_Come_**_ **visit us.**_

It crumbled to ash the second her fingers touched the edge and a woman appeared before Misao's eyes and then vanished. A flash of memory?

_Priestess_!

The shrine!

Misao stood abruptly almost knocking the candle on the floor. Soujiro appeared in the doorway looking toward her curiously. He opened his mouth to speak but she cut him off.

"I'm going to visit a friend. I'll be back in a couple of days. You'll be okay, won't you?"

"Of course, do not trouble yourself on my account. You've been very generous to me."

She nodded absently. "Consider the house yours until I return. I won't ask you to take over my job, but if you see anyone getting out of control - could you take care of it? Things shouldn't get bad while I'm gone though."

"Certainly."

Turning suddenly, she began to walk toward the door. It was undeniable; the shrine grounds were calling.

* * *

Misao stood by the gateway, her hand upon the huge torii gate, eyes wide in wonder. When had this gotten here?

It was huge and red reaching up far into the sky.

"It's- it's a fairly new addition to our humble temple here."

Misao turned toward the voice seeing an elderly woman dressed in priestess robes.

"Our temple was taken over briefly by a priest and his monks who came and served here, but they have gone again now. They were the ones who hoisted up that new gate. Lovely, isn't it?"

The woman smiled fondly at the memory, but Misao could only stare at the woman herself.

Did she...?

"We've had a couple of visitors already today, please, come, feel welcome."

Misao bowed. "I'm sorry, I didn't dress properly for this visit. It was kind of spur-of-the-moment."

It had been a quick decision. One moment she was staring out her kitchen window lamenting her life and then next she wanted to see the shrine yards of her youth. Maybe she was too impulsive. She had rushed out of her house wearing a simple shirt and skirt.

Yes, she definitely was too impulsive.

She stepped into the sandy path and walked toward the priestess. She was old and Misao didn't recognize her…

No, of course not. She hadn't been to this Temple in ages, no one who had actually known her would still be alive; they were all dead now. All of them.

"What brings you to our grounds today?"

Misao glanced toward her seeing past the sagging face and folded hands. This woman was a warrior priestess, one of those who hunted.

"Just reminiscing, although now that I'm here I'm not sure why I came. Maybe I forgot."

"Forgot what? Your purpose or yourself?"

Misao smiled sadly. "Both I guess."

"May I ask your name?"

Misao looked away, turning her eyes up to the sky. "Misao," she murmured weakly as though hating the sound of her own name.

"M-Misao? How unusual, we've had two visitors today discussing a girl named Misao. Perhaps that is good luck…"

"Two? Perhaps its bad luck… Misao murmured. "Hannya and Aoshi-sama… Was it you who called me to the Shrine today?"

The woman stayed still for a long moment and then nodded. "If you would permit me, Makimachi-san, there is something here that I would like to turn over to you. It has been in our care too long."

Curious, Misao allowed the woman to led her away into the building.

* * *

AN: Oh! Discovery! I'm trying to finish this, I actually deviated a great deal from the original storyline mapping out a whole new one. I like the new one better.


	5. Part V

**The Trap of Innocence**

**Part 5

* * *

**

Inside a building Misao hadn't seen in decades, her mind wandered. She recalled running down the halls in the pre-dawn darkness. She could remember the first time a bow was pressed into her palm and the difficulty she had pulling back the string. Smiling, she remembered the first time she missed the archery target and her arrow skidded along the ground, embedding into the dirt.

They encountered no one along the way and Misao wondered where the other priestesses had gone to and how many remained at the shrine. Hearing the footsteps ahead of her stop, Misao turned her attention back to the priestess before her. She had slid open a door and stepped inside.

"Please come in, Makimachi-san… Do you remember this room?"

Misao didn't need the prompt, she remembered it well. Kisa had died in this room, she would never forget it. It had hurt more than anything to see the person she had loved most breathe their last. Tears swelled in her eyes before she could even try to change her train of thought to stop them.

"Kisa-sama," Misao murmured. "I hope she is resting peacefully."

The priestess turned away and padded across the room toward where and old chest was sitting in the corner. She kneeled and lifted the lid. The old wood groaned and creaked. Within, buried deep in the box, the priestess removed a small purple colored pouch. She struggled to rise up again onto her feet and Misao moved to assist her, but she managed to clamor up again on her own.

"Here, this is yours. Your mother left it with you all those years ago. Kisa left us a note telling us what was and that it was to be stored here. Your mother had wanted you to have it but Kisa had thought it was a vessel of evil and kept it from you. I would like to be rid of its presence here if that were true."

Curious, Misao carefully slipped open the pouch and tipped the bag sliding the contents into her palm. Glittering gold was the first thing to meet her gaze. A gold chain and attached to it a claw shaped pendant holding a marble.

Misao lifted it, staring at the odd necklace. It was the most unusual thing… Raising it up, she peered at the marble in the clutches of the dragon claws and seeing the thing inside, she gasped.

There within was a string of kanji, the symbols lit in red and golden fire. She could see the flames lapping at it as if it were burning eternally inside.

"Ashataru?" she murmured.

Whose name was that? Had it been her mother?

Misao turned her gaze up. "Thank you, Miko-sama. I will trouble you no longer."

They bowed to one another and Misao left in silence. Her memories of the shrine passed her quietly, departing from her memory. Burning with curiosity, she left the grounds having one destination in mind. The only person who could tell her anything. She needed Hannya.

* * *

As a Guardian, Misao passed through the gates to the Dark Realm without notice and without consequence. She came and went as she pleased. It was a unique privilege and she took great advantage of it.

She passed through the gateway and went from sunny skies to dark, rumbling clouds overhead. She had passed only two or three paces into Shikijou's territory before the rain began to pelt down upon her. The droplets were large and they were cold. Tucking the pouch into her clothing she began to run holding her arms close to her body to ensure her treasure wasn't lost along the way.

Shikijou's territory was, in means of shape, narrow but long. She would be traveling transversely and thus her trip was expected to be short. Straight through to the other side was Hannya's territory which was much larger and far more dangerous. Hannya had taken to adopting wild beasts to patrol his "yard" years ago. She found it a great hassle to have to outrun hungry animals every time she wanted to visit but he ignored her protests and told her frankly, "Don't visit so often."

She had had mixed feelings about the man who had fathered her ever since she met him. While he had been supportive and protective of her the last few years, before that he had been distant and critical. She had been without a father her entire life and hadn't been looking for one when she met him.

Now it was far too late for him to be a parent, she certainly didn't need one. She was, in human years, an old woman even if she was a bit young in the Dark Realm.

Panting, she paused to lean against a tree. She could see the dark line of fence that marked the edge of Shikijou's territory. Hannya had put it up after Shikijou had complained that his beasts were ripping up his land and killing his villagers. Misao, a frequent visitor of Shikijou's territories, had yet to see his "villagers". The only people who lived on his land were the servants who worked in his house and that was a collection of five to ten huts. "Villagers" indeed.

Taking a great breath, she patted her garment for the pouch and sprinted toward the fence. She had a long way to go.

* * *

"No, Aoshi-sama, there has been no word about the border killings."

The reclusive House leader sat staring at the surface of his desk glumly. He had received a report from Saitou just an hour past that there had been no activity and he was suspicious.

"Are any of Kamatari's associates free from prison?"

"The one living at Misao's house," Hannya answered. "The boy… He's dying isn't he?"

Aoshi nodded without comment. Thunder cracked ominously overhead and the mansion trembled.

"Perhaps these killings are a diversion from something larger?" Hannya suggested.

"Aa," Aoshi agreed. "Could be. Are there any suspicious reports?"

"I will check."

Hannya turned to head toward the doorway when a **tap-tap** came from the direction of the window before it swung open with a big gust of wind. A large black bird swooped inside, water dripping from its wings. The wind howled at the open window.

**CAW**!

It flapped its wet wings and circled around landing clumsily on Hannya's shoulder, claws digging into the fabric of his shirt. Reaching up, Hannya detached the cylinder from the birds ankle and it pushed up and flew back out the window, disappearing into the storm. Aoshi stood and pushed the windows closed staring dispassionately at the spatter of water the wind that blown into the room.

Hannya unfolded his note.

**_"Makimachi Misao has come. She insists upon waiting for you." _**

"Misao is waiting for me at my residence. She is upset about something. May I report back later?"

"Go," Aoshi replied without looking up as he sat himself back at his desk.

Hannya turned and was gone.

* * *

He expected to hear her shouting the moment he stepped over the threshold, instead, the house was eerily silent. Misao, in his experience, had never been a quiet guest. His front hall was a bit wet where shoes were stored but everything looked clean, nothing broken.

Was she upset then and not angry?

Her rages usually equaled property damage.

As he discarded his shoes a maid appeared from beyond the stairs. "Hannya-sama, Makimachi-san is waiting for you in your study. She insisted that I message you, she's quite excited."

"She's quiet for being excited, isn't she?" he asked sliding off his coat, grateful he'd thought to take it when he left.

"I thought so too. When I checked on her, she was asleep on your couch. The poor thing came in soaked and wild eyed."

Hannya nodded. "Did you get her changed into something warm?"

"Of course, Sir."

"Good, thank you."

She nodded, bowed, and disappeared.

He could only wonder what was about to befall him as he headed for his study. Opening the door, he was greeted with silence. He stepped inside and settled himself in his favorite chair by the fire, angling it so that he could see the couch. She was still bundled up there buried beneath a stack of blankets.

He wondered what it would have been like to have her grow up before him instead of at that shrine. Would she have become a great hunter? Would she be more open and affectionate toward him instead of her impassive address of "Hannya". She refused to acknowledge him as he father and he could do nothing to force it. Instead, he watched her sleep.

* * *

Sleepily, Misao opened her eyes. Sleeping? She blinked rapidly. She'd fallen asleep. Chastising herself, she failed to immediately notice she wasn't alone and Hannya watched her from his chair. She noticed the stripes first. Turning her gaze up to his face she almost jumped when she saw his mask was missing.

Instead of asking after it, she blurted out the first thing on her mind. "What happened to your face?"

The remaining skin on his face stretched in a ghastly smile. "Do you think I am called 'Beast Hannya' for nothing?"

"What's that mean? A beast ripped off your face?" she asked shifting herself up, crossing her legs and pulling the blankets around her. This place was so much warmer than her own house, but it was so _nice_. She refused to admit to herself she liked it more than her own house, but deep down she knew that was true.

"You are a rude child," he chastised. "I was captured and tortured in a war."

"A man did that to you?"

He didn't respond. "What brings you here in such a flurry?"

It focused her and she frowned. "I got a message from the Four Hills Shrine, so I went to visit. One of the priestesses there gave me something. She said my mother had left it with me but that Kisa-sama had decided not to give it to me fearing it was some kind of evil trinket."

"What is it?"

She slipped the pouch from her pocket and tossed it toward him. He caught it in his gloves hands and reached in. He withdrew his hand, two fingers pinched together around the chain. He held it up for inspection glancing at it critically.

"Ashataru?" he murmured. "You got this from the Shrine?"

Misao nodded. "What is it?"

He glanced at it again reaching with his other hand to touch the little glass globe. A bright red arc of fire struck his hand just before the entire thing, globe and chain, caught fire. Hurriedly, he tossed it back to Misao who scrambled _not _to catch the burning necklace.

"It's a protective mechanism. Only a blood Ashataru can deactivate it. Touch it, Misao."

Shakily, she reached for the burning pile of gold on the floor. She hissed as the fire lapped at her skin and then, belatedly, realized it didn't hurt. Scooping her fingers around the chain, her palm touched the globe and the fire vanished.

In a flash, Hannya was up out of his chair, the mask on the table was swept up, and he was gone. Misao was left to ponder her mystery alone.

She had thought "Ashataru" was a person, but perhaps it was a thing? He had said "an Ashataru". Was she some other kind of creature and _not _a vampire half-breed? Her lip curled in disgust. The news just got better and better, didn't it?

* * *

AN: I'm trying to finish this one. I think it will end at chapter 8 or 9. 


	6. Part VI

**The Trap of Innocence**

**Part VI

* * *

**

Hannya ran to the House of Shinomori. He arrived wet and his appearance startled the servant girl who answered the door. His eyes glowed like fiery embers and the girl bowed herself down out of the way and he swept by her without notice. He stalked down the halls toward the Shinomori library. It was dark and empty inside. He was forced to wait a long few moments before the library caretaker, Kai, appeared. He had learned once before not to touch the books out of the presence of the library caretaker and didn't desire to repeat the episode.

The old man Kai was stooped over and he bowed lowly. "Good day, Hannya-san. How may I assist?"

"I'm looking for information on the House of Ashataru."

The old man's bushy white eyebrows shot up. "Ah, yes, yes… The Noble House of Ashataru, such a wise and cautious group. This way…" He turned and hobbled down the aisle. "Do you need specific information?"

"I heard rumors. Is it recorded that there are any survivors of the Ashataru House and that the family crest disappeared?"

"Yes, yes, very true, Hannya-san. The Ashataru House, wise and cautious they were, they did not foresee the attack by Shishio's group. The House of Saitou, however, has always been paranoid and proactive and Shishio's forces in that domain were decimated. The Ashataru's chose to wait and see and the entire family was wiped out except for a child, the lone heir of Ashataru." He stopped at a shelf and pulled out a thick red bound book. Turning, he hobbled back toward a table and flipped it open. Hannya peered over the shorter man's shoulder.

"Ah, yes, yes… Here. The last child of the Ashataru family was a girl named Chiraki. She is known to have survived the massacre of her family but she disappeared and the family crest, it was a necklace, it disappeared also."

"Would she still be alive?"

"Oh yes. She couldn't be that old, barely a century and a half by now."

"Are there any pictures of the women in the family?" Hannya pressed and Kai flipped a few more pages, landing on a family portrait. Hannya stared at the faces frozen in time and searched his memory. Thinking... thinking...

Turning on his heel he curtly thanked the librarian. He needed to see Aoshi-sama immediately.

* * *

Alone again, Misao wandered toward the front door and pulled it open. There was no point in staying, he obviously wasn't going to help her. The pedant had something to do with a person or group called "Ashataru" and she was apparently one of them or related to them. Her mysterious mother had to be the connection. She wondered, suddenly, if that woman was alive. She had always thought of the woman, her mother, as dead. It struck her as odd that she had never thought of whether or not she lived, not even when a human could still be alive.

Standing in the open doorway about to step back out into the rain, she was stopped by the servant's voice behind her.

"Makimachi-san! Please take a coat with you!"

Misao let the woman slip a coat over her shoulders. She didn't question the size or availability of the coat, she knew Hannya had clothes of hers all over his house despite her infrequent visits. She thanked the woman and stepped out into the rain before pulling the hood up over her head. The necklace was tucked in its pouch close to her skin beneath her clothes.

For a long moment of indecision she stood there and let the rain strike her before she turned and began to run.

* * *

"Kai says the heir of Ashataru is most definitely still alive."

Aoshi stared. "Shishio destroyed the House of Ashataru, his followers would not be interested in returning that group to power."

Hannya paced irritably. "That priestess from the shrine called Misao and Misao went there to see them. She gave her something and Misao came to see _me_. When I met with her, Misao had in her possession the family crest of the House of Ashataru. The priestess told Misao her _mother_ had left it with her."

Aoshi's head snapped up. "She's not a half-breed? You mated with the last heir of Ashataru?"

"I can't remember," Hannya replied shortly. "I don't remember anything that far back. If she isn't half-human, why does her virgin blood act as a ward? How is that possible? How does she survive? Why don't her seals kill her?"

"The woman could've cursed her," Aoshi replied calmly leaning back in his chair. "It would be easy enough to find out but the seals _must_ come off. Where is she?"

"I left her behind at the house."

"Did you tell her anything?"

"No," Hannya replied still pacing. "She's probably gone by now looking for her own answers. She still has the family crest with her. It catches fire whenever someone not family related touches it."

Aoshi nodded. "First, find Misao."

Watching Hannya leave, Aoshi was torn with indecision. Should he wait or should he too go and look for her? She wasn't a half-breed; she wasn't half human. He wanted to find her and sink his teeth into her and mark every inch of skin as his own. Damn Hannya for getting in his way! He growled lowly.

Misao was the daughter of the last heir of the House of Ashataru. Taking her to mate would add centuries of history and regality to his ruling claim. The House of Ashataru had ruled for centuries, longer even than the House of Saitou. After the House of Ashataru had fallen, chaos fell over the territory.

All of the junior houses fell into war over the open slot at the top. He, himself, had gone to war against friend and neighbor. Heads fell and blood stained the land, though it had been him who remained victorious in the end holding his bloody katana he did not look back on that part of his life proudly. Rather, it made him feel old. Misao was so young in comparison.

Moreover, where was the mysterious Ashataru Chiraki? Should he search for her also? Did he want to raise the ghosts of the past? Did he want to alert those now serving him that there were living members of the House of Ashataru? How would it damage his ruling claim?

He had thought the human woman that birthed Misao dead ages ago, but if she was birthed from one of his own kind… Why had the woman abandoned both Misao and the crest? Was it planned? Did she wish to be distanced from the dead House? Perhaps she wanted a new life and becoming pregnant had afforded her a way to be rid of the troublesome family emblem?

He stood. He would get nowhere speculating from his chair and it had been a long time since he'd had any active work… Or at the very least any challenging active work…

Standing, he grabbed his coat and stepped out into the hall. Okina was at the other end chatting with a maid who, once seeing him, slipped down another corridor and disappeared. Okina turned about as he approached with a dampened smile.

"Hello, Aoshi-sama. Can I assist with anything?"

"There is a woman named Ashataru Chiraki, she is likely using another name. I want her found and I want it kept secret. Bring her here."

Okina's jaw almost fell. "Ashataru?" he whispered.

"Find her, "Aoshi repeated and stepped out the door past the old man and promptly vanished. A drop of rain never touched him.

* * *

Misao's house was the lone building in a long stretch of green. The shock of the bright and sunny afternoon sky was a momentary disorientation for the mission driven Aoshi. He did not feel Misao's presence within the house, he knew it even as he approached it, that she would not be found there. Walking up the stairs and crossing the porch, he paused in knocking.

The person inside was not an owner, but a guest.

He reached for the door handle and let himself in wondering briefly if he would find the boy inside going through Misao's drawers. He had not forgotten the task he'd given the boy thinking Misao to be a human virgin. That had been lurking in his mind constantly. He had, the entire time, been on the edge of betraying Hannya's wishes. It made his insides boil that Hannya would not approve of him and he was tempted, this way and that, on what he should do about it.

Now, it was not an issue. It was a great indecisive mass off his shoulders. He was free to do as he wished, to do as he'd always wished because _he_ was the House leader and Misao belonged to _him_. Better than that, she was an Ashataru heir and he needed her… First, he had to get rid of the boy…

Inside, he found him at the stove, smiling at a pot of soup. The boy spoke to him without ever glancing up. "Good afternoon, Shinomori-sama. Misao said she was going away for a few days."

Aoshi ignored it. "You are no longer needed to complete the task."

Soujiro turned and met Aoshi's gaze, his smile falling. Did the boy sense his death was near? Aoshi reached into the pocket of his coat and Soujiro slightly tensed. "There is an acquaintance of yours, Kamatari, making trouble."

Between Aoshi's fingers was a glass vial; he tossed it at Soujiro who strove to catch the precious item. Turning, Aoshi issued his last orders. "Kill him. Misao will not be returning to this House. You may take this job from Shikijou."

The vial in Soujiro's hands was dark, the blood inside rich. To drink it was to bind himself forever to Shinomori Aoshi as he had done with Shishio, but it would save his life. Did he want to live and serve the House of Shinomori? Did he want to kill Kamatari?

Either way, he was released from his seduction of Misao and found himself relieved. The possessiveness displayed by the House Leader toward her was dangerous and frightening. He had had the unpleasant suspicions that if he _had_ seduced her, the House Leader wouldn't cure him, but simply kill him.

He could take the blood, be cured, and take over Misao's job as a Realm Guardian all in one happy little package. Something, however, was nagging at him. Everything felt wrong. Where, he wondered, was Misao? Why wasn't she coming back? Should he go and look for her?

* * *

Misao frowned. The rain hadn't stopped, it was dark and she was, not for the first time, completely lost. She had learned the hard way just how dangerous it was to get lost in the Dark Realm. She glanced around but saw nothing but the lanky silhouettes of trees. In the open she was susceptible to the hunts of other vampires and in the forests she was vulnerable against the beasts. The beasts were worse, quieter, faster and with bigger teeth and nastier intentions. She was mostly soaked except for the scant protection of her waistcoat.

Her legs were bare, mud was splashed up to her knees from running, her ankles and feet wet through. Her toes squished inside her shoes and made her gait unsteady on the already unstable ground beneath her feet.

From the right, she heard something out of place but saw nothing. The hair on the back of her neck rose in alarm, her body tingled. Someone was watching… She took an uneasy step backwards, debating…

Run or fight?

Run or fight?

Run or fight?

Her heart pounded as she thought, her eyes frantically searching for her enemy. Was she being paranoid or was there someone there? She felt out of sorts, her head fuzzy. What should she do?

Run or fight?

The trees seemed to part and she blinked, rubbing her eyes as someone appeared before her. She could see the glint of light off a long, bladed weapon and the color teal very clearly in the darkness. Was her enemy glowing? Or… part of … _her_?

"Lurking, lurking in the dark… Want to play?" A raspy voice whispered.

Woman?

Run or fight?

Was it too late to run? Her feet felt planted.

The woman came closer and closer, tiny steps, and the blade became clearer and clearer, shining in the dark.

Scythe.

It was a scythe.

Misao patted her pockets. She didn't have her weapon; she had come on whim and not thought it out. She was wandering the Dark Realm without a weapon! Unexpectedly, her foe stopped and leaned against the scythe.

"What is your name?"

"Misao," she shakily answered, trying to steady herself and think. She needed a plan!

"Misao… Misao… That's a cute name; I like it. I'm Kamatari."

Misao was puzzled. Who was this person?

"Let's play, Misao."

Without warning, the woman dove at her, lifting the scythe and swinging it down in a perfect arc. Misao leapt and slipped, falling backwards landing in a clumsy heap in the mud.

"Clumsy girl aren't you, Misao?"

Kamatari laughed. She couldn't see the scythe wielder, the color of the kimono seemed to have faded, she could only see the blade. Misao rolled as the weapon suddenly swept down toward her again. She wasn't going to make it, too slow…

Too slow!

The tip of the scythe struck her knee, Misao froze as it sank into the tiny bone inside her knee and stopped. Everything seemed to stop. The rain was still falling, but she could no longer feel it. A deep, burning fire felt like it was erupting from inside her. She was hot all over and the scythe point in her knee burned.

There was a sudden flash of light and Misao closed her eyes. When she pulled her arm away from her face she saw the point of the scythe was broken off and jutting out of her flesh and the scythe was feet away from her alit with fire. It was a deep red fire. She watched it fascinated as burned.

"Oh! Nice trick, Misao. I like that one."

Her opponent seemed amused. Was the crazy woman trying to kill her or not? Her knee burned and she hissed as she tried to move. A shadow appeared over her and suddenly the kimono was visible again, but Kamatari seemed like a black shadow. There was a slight painful pressure on her knee and then the blade was gone.

"Why can't I see you?" Misao asked.

Kamatari straightened, standing over her. "I don't know, why can't you?"

Misao put her hands against the ground and pushed herself up. "Are you a psycho or something?"

Kamatari laughed again. "You're fun, let's travel a little while together. I'm lonely traveling alone."

Misao started to protest but Kamatari linked her arm through Misao's and started pulling her along, the burning scythe was left behind.

"So, Misao…" Kamatari snuggled up against her. "Tell me _all_ about yourself…"

* * *

**AN:End chapter 6.**


	7. Part VII

**The Trap of Innocence**

**Part VII

* * *

**

Misao was going to get answers. It was a poor move on Hannya's part not to bring her with him earlier, Aoshi thought, but it was done now and she was likely wandering around searching for those answers. Cursed and sealed, Misao was in great danger wandering about on her own.

If she found the answers she was seeking, she would most definitely go to the old House of Ashataru, a huge, sprawling mansion that had fallen into serious disrepair. In the chaos following the slaughter of the family, Aoshi had seen it prudent to abandon the great house and had used his own family residence.

The House of Ashataru could be seen from the east facing windows of his own mansion. Many a night he had peered outside and seen lights in the old windows of the place, but it was well known that various groups took up residence in the place and no one saw fit to toss them out as the house belonged to no one.

"Shinomori."

Saitou. Aoshi turned to see the lit end of the other man's cigarette burning brightly and a wispy trail of smoke dancing upwards. Saitou's golden eyes seemed to gleam at him.

"There's been no activity. Heard anything about Kamatari or have you just been chasing down that skirt of yours?"

"I'm looking into other things, "Aoshi replied.

Saitou crossed his arms. "What other things?" Saitou Hajime was a good source of information but he was, in Aoshi's opinion, extremely nosy. He was always asking questions and trying to squeeze answers out of people for no reason at all. Perhaps he enjoyed being a center of information. Maybe he was simply very nosy. Aoshi decided to gamble on it.

The House of Saitou and the House of Ashataru had ruled at the same time. It was very likely Saitou would know _something._ If he would tell Aoshi that something was another matter entirely.

"Do you recall the fall of the Ashataru House?"

Saitou's mouth twitched in displeasure. "I'm not _that_ old, Shinomori. My father ruled the House then."

"There was a survivor, wasn't there? A girl, Chiraki?"

Saitou stared at him a moment, pinching his cigarette between his fingers, assessing. "Yes, there was a girl."

"I'm looking for her. She was too young to survive alone."

Saitou cocked an eyebrow. "Why do you need her?"

Aoshi turned to fully face the other man, intrigued by his tone. Did Saitou know something or was he just curious about it?

"The family crest of the House of Ashataru has reappeared in my territory and I do not like the implications."

Saitou grinned at him suddenly, teeth pointy and menacing. "Fearing an uprising, Shinomori? This about that girl of yours, isn't it?" The smoking man flicked the cigarette away. "I'll take you to Chiraki."

Aoshi narrowed his eyes.

Saitou knew where she was? **How** did Saitou know about Chiraki and Misao? How much _did_ Saitou know?

* * *

"You're completely nuts," Misao frowned, trying again to wrench her arm free. "You're strong, too."

"Oh, I am, aren't I?" Kamatari giggled in her ear. "But I'll let you in on a little secret, I'm actually a boy."

Misao stopped walking and Kamatari stopped beside her. "No kidding, you're a guy?"

Kamatari nodded, smiling broadly.

Misao stared. The black shadowy film covering Kamatari, hiding her, had faded along the way. "You know, you look pretty good in that for a guy. I wish I looked that good in a kimono…" Misao frowned. "You wear it all the time?"

Kamatari threw his arms around Misao. "You're so cute! I'm taking you home with me!"

"Home?" Misao muffled into Kamatari's chest. "Where's that?"

"The old Ashataru mansion, ever been there? Beautiful house… I have tea parties."

Ashataru mansion? Misao let Kamatari pull her along. "What exactly _is_ the Ashataru Mansion?"

"The old ruling house… Oh, you're probably too young to remember. A long time ago, a great man Shishio tried to take over the two houses, Ashataru and Saitou. The House of Saitou is crazy and started slaying people, none of our people made it out alive there. Shishio-sama wanted to take down the 'Great and Noble House of Ashataru', he always hated it. The massacre was beautiful, Shishio-sama was magnificent, only one little girl survived, she disappeared, no one could ever find her. Shishio-sama died soon after though in a seize and a war erupted afterwards and Shinomori became the new ruling house."

"So Ashataru was a ruling house… " Misao repeated in awe. "And you live there?"

Kamatari brightened at Misao's tone. "Oh! You'll love it! Let's have tea together!"

He pulled Misao by the hand and the girl failed to notice both her wrists were bare of their beads.

* * *

Aoshi followed Saitou up the stairs of the Saitou Estate, to the second and then third floors and down a long hall. Aoshi's mind whirled with possibilities and speculation. Saitou was _housing_ the lost heir of Ashataru? Why? What was the connection between them?

At the end of the hall, Saitou knocked twice and slid the door open.

"Hey," he greeted someone inside. "Brought a visitor."

Aoshi stepped in after him and stopped abruptly at the sight of two women sitting on a futon rolled out on the floor. He recognized Saitou's wife immediately, she had her arm draped over the other woman's shoulder. It was the other woman, that caused Aoshi pause. She looked so much like Misao… there was no doubt in his head at all that Misao was an Ashataru. Her hair was dark and straight, her eyes that same bright color as Misao's.

"Good day, Aoshi," Tokio greeted him. "Are you well?"

"Fine, thank you. I apologize for intruding upon you so rudely today," he spoke, his eyes trained on the other woman. "This is Ashataru Chiraki?"

Tokio's hand tightened on the other woman's shoulder and she looked up to her husband, her kind eyes full of fright. "You're not going to let him hurt her, are you?"

Saitou scoffed and leaned back against the wall. "He's not here to hurt anybody."

"Why is she with you?" Aoshi asked.

Chiraki had her eyes trained on the floor, her thin fingers wrapped around a tiny doll. There was a threaded needle stuck in the head, she appeared to be sewing it. Tokio answered in Saitou's silence. "She's Hajime's cousin. When her family was killed, his father rescued her and brought her here where she's been hidden away."

Saitou stepped up beside Aoshi and then leaned down toward her. "Is your doll finished yet, Chiraki?"

"No." The woman raised her head, her long black locks trailing over her narrow shoulders. She was a beautiful woman, Aoshi thought, if not for the haunted eyes. "There's a strange man in my room."

"That's Shinomori, he came to visit you. You want to talk to him?" Aoshi thought Saitou's voice was strangely loud and he wondered if the other man realized it. Or did the woman have trouble hearing?

"Visit me?"

She sounded child-like. She shifted and Tokio's arm fell from her shoulders. Chiraki stood and Tokio beside her, straightening Chiraki's yukata around her frame tighter. She bowed lowly and did so slowly. "Did you bring me news of my baby?"

They stared at one another a moment. She was bent slightly and Tokio looked worried, afraid she would fall over.

"Misao?" he asked.

The woman's eyes brightened and she smiled. "Misao, yes. Did you find her? She's with the priestesses."

He nodded. "I found her. She's well."

"Is she here?"

"No, she didn't come today. Would you like to see her?"

"Yes. I tried… to go back but I couldn't remember where… I didn't know how to find Hannya… I don't think I told him… Is he okay? My beloved Hannya?"

How had this woman who had been locked up even come to know Hannya? Had they met before? Did Hannya have businesses here and they met? Did they meet when she escaped the house? Did she truly love Hannya? Would it be wise to bring Misao here? Better yet, how had Hannya gotten involved with this woman? Was he not remembering on purpose to hide it? Was he simply lying?

"Hannya is well. Did you leave your family crest with Misao?"

The woman's smile faded and she lowered her head, closing her eyes. "I had to. Misao is Hannya's baby and mine, she's strong, the priestesses will protect her and the crest."

"You know Misao is not a baby anymore?"

Her eyes flicked open and went wide. "Oh. No… She grew up? She won't want the doll I've been making for her." She shook her head sadly. "She doesn't come visit me."

"She doesn't know where you are."

"Oh." She reached out, her hands pale and bony and wrapped them around one of Aoshi's wrists. "Please tell her? No one comes to see me but Tokio. Saitou-sama was so angry…" Her hands fell away from his wrist.

She turned and Tokio wrapped her arms around her.

"Thank you for seeing me today, Ashataru-san," Aoshi spoke and he saw her nod against Tokio's shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Shinomori-san. Thank you for coming to visit. Bring Misao, okay?"

He and Saitou stepped into the hall. "She's not completely lucid. She goes in and out. We tried to find the baby, but she couldn't remember where she left it and there are temples _everywhere_. She was gone from us for months, we had no idea where she'd been wandering."

"Did you speak to Hannya?"

"Said he didn't remember, but I'd bet my ass he was lying. She was away from us for _months_, Chiraki can't make her own tea let alone live by herself."

Aoshi internally glowered. Lying?

"Was she trained by your family?"

"Yes," Saitou answered.

"Can she cast curses?"

Saitou slanted a glance in his direction. "No. Her abilities are limited."

They arrived at the front door and Aoshi stepped out it.

"If you bring the girl back with you, be prepared to take the woman with you. I've been obligated to her long enough, Tokio deserves a break from this."

Aoshi nodded.

* * *

Kamatari spun around in a circle. "Beautiful, isn't it?"

Misao glanced around. Ignoring the char marks from a fire and the obvious water damage, the broken furniture and the fact that it had been looted bare, she guessed it was a pretty nice house. She thought back to her days sleeping in the often cold shrine quarters and wondered how life would've been different growing up in the massive compound. This, she told herself was her mothers house, her mysterious mother.

"You live here?" Misao murmured.

"Lots of people live here actually, it's a big place. Most of us are old comrades back from Shishio's days, that makes us ages older than you, you're a baby… some of them are just homeless people who fell in with us."

Kamatari led her down a hall and pulled open a heavy sliding door. Inside people were sprawled around the room, crowded around tables throwing dice and loudly gambling. Kamatari smiled. "The boys need something to do to keep them occupied. Want to play?"

Misao glanced around. She'd never seen so many of her own kind crowded into a room before. She'd never even seen a room so big before.

"Can I look around? This is such a big house…"

Kamatari nodded. "Go ahead."

Her own kind… was she… if her mother was an Ashataru that meant she wasn't half human after all. She was one hundred percent … she reached up to her neck toward her beads and her fingers crackled as they got too close. Peering over the shoulder of a player, one of the men took notice of her.

"Hey, baby want to play? Come on, I got a seat for you right here." He patted his lap and she scowled at him.

"Want your teeth knocked out?" she snapped back at him. She regretted that she had not worn a kimono. She felt exposed in a roomful of gambling, drunken men with her legs bare.

She turned away from the commotion, missing his reply. Walking the length of the room she peered around, but Kamatari was gone. Passing out of the room, she glanced around. The walls were bare, the paintings long gone. The furniture that remained was broken, fragmented. Each room she passed through looked like a war zone. The farther in the house she got, the dirtier and more haunting it became. Passing through a broken doorway she stopped. The room was covered in dark spatters. Who had died here? Enemy or ally? Had it been an old family member of hers? How much of the old blood on the floor and walls of this place still ran in her?

"My mother's house," she whispered. "This is my house… all this… something of mine…"

She stepped out and into a hall on the other side only to meet more destruction. It was everywhere. Hearing a distant giggle, she stopped and looked down the hall to see Kamatari stepping out of a room and on his arm, she gasped.

"Soujiro…" Misao murmured.

"Oh… Do you know each other?" Kamatari asked.

"Misao was very kind to me. She let me stay with her a few days," Soujiro answered, smiling. "She's talented."

Kamatari cocked his head a bit. "I thought she was a bit clumsy, but cute, so let's keep her. Come on, Misao… Want to take over the world with us?"

Kamatari grinned and Misao felt her insides tighten with fear. Was there anyway out of this place if she said no? Was he serious? Was he joking? How to tell?

Feeling, something tickling her feet, she looked down. Around the soles of her shoes shined bright little beads. Her ankle seals had broken. Panicked, she checked her wrists, but they too were gone.

* * *

** AN: I'm on break! Updates, updates... hopefully. **


	8. Part VIII

**The Trap of Innocence**

**Part VIII

* * *

**

Quickly scaling the steps back at the Shinomori mansion, Aoshi threw open his office door and began to root through the closet on the far side. He withdrew his kodachi and started sliding other things into his pockets.

"Aoshi-sama?"

He barely glanced up to see Okina and Hannya at the doorway.

"Are you going to battle?" Okina asked astonishment clear in his voice. It had been ages since Aoshi had battled.

Aoshi ignored him, instead turning his attention to Hannya as he straightened. "I found Chiraki."

Hannya remained very still and silent.

"You have some explaining to do when this is over. Now, I have business to attend."

"Aoshi-sama! Wait! Are you going to battle?" Okina called after him as he stalked down the hall away from his companions. "Allow me to send some people with you."

"I will go," Hannya volunteered. "Please allow me to serve with you, Aoshi-sama."

"Fine," he curtly answered, throwing open the front door and disappearing out it. Hannya followed after. "Misao has very likely already made it to the Ashataru Mansion by now and there is no knowing what awaits any of us there."

Before Hannya could respond or acknowledge it, Aoshi was gone and Hannya was left dreading the end of the impending affair.

When Hannya appeared on the lawn of the great house moments later, Aoshi was already there waiting for him. "Misao is inside. This house and the people in it are of no consequence."

"You expect a battle here?"

"This has been a center of rebellious activity since its abandonment, but it could not be destroyed with the pendant still missing because the wards on the necklace are the same on the house. They have to be destroyed together."

"Is it your intent to destroy them?"

Aoshi was silent. "When I find her, I'm cutting all her seals. I suggest you stay out of the way. House of Ashataru or not, Misao now belongs to the House of Shinomori and so I own her." The tone was threatening. The time of peace and permission had passed; Aoshi was out to stake ownership.

Hannya said nothing.

"Go through the back. If you remove her from the house before I see her, you will be punished."

Without ever glancing back, Aoshi strode through the front door of the once-grand house and it slid closed behind him. The echoing sounds of gambling caught his ears and he wandered toward the sound. Sitting propped up against the wall was a skinny old man clasping a sake bottle. He raised the bottle in greeting but said nothing and Aoshi walked by.

He pulled the door open and stepped through into chaos. Laughter, the scent of alcohol, and the roll of dice all combined to grate against his already frayed nerves. Stepping forward, he began navigating his way through the tables.

As he made his way through the loud conversation became hurried whispers about his presence there.

_"Shinomori…" _

_"He's here…"_

_"Let's get the hell out of here before Kamatari shows up…"_

Before he reached the other side and slid open the door, the room behind him was half empty. Pulling open the next door, he was met with another empty room; table legs and scraps of wood littered the floor… Old, crusty blades were discarded here and there, blood stains still visible on the fraying and thinning tatami mats.

_"Get the hell out, man, he's nuts!" _

Aoshi stepped into a hallway, turning at the scream to see two young men tearing down the hall toward him. With their heads turned, their eyes straining to see their hunter, they barely saw Aoshi before they crashed into him. Rather, they crashed into one another, collapsing onto the floor in a clumsy pile.

"Ah… Please don't kill us, Shinomori-sama, we aren't part of them, we swear!"

"We just wanted somewhere to sleep… "

The two males looked up at him pleading. Ahead, he sensed movement and peered up to see Hannya approaching, the blade in his hands dripping blood.

"Are you killing your way through the house?" Aoshi asked while the two boys continued to plead, whimpering.

"Whatever way is effective," Hannya replied.

Aoshi turned his gaze down. "I'm looking for a girl named Makimachi Misao. Young, short, has a long braid…? Have you seen her here?"

"Yes! Yes! She's here… She's upstairs with Soujiro and Kamatari, we saw her go up about a few minutes ago," one pleaded, his hair, an odd spiky red color bobbed as he shook his head erratically.

"Soujiro?" Aoshi questioned aloud thinking back to the smiling man from Misao's house. Had this been some kind of set up? Was the boy an enemy?

"Young guy, always smiling, but strong…"

"We stay out of his way, he's nice and all but has mood swings…"

"Yeah…"

"Yeah…"

"Get out," Aoshi remarked and the two boys jumped up and ran past him.

"Thank you!"

"Thank you so much," they yelled as they ran the opposite direction.

"The boy who was living with Misao?" Hannya asked.

"I tasked him with killing Kamatari, I see he has not done so."

"Then perhaps the border killings I _were_ a distraction?" Hannya speculated, turning. "The stairs are this way."

Aoshi followed him up.

* * *

Her throat felt tight. Soujiro and Kamatari, each standing at a window on the opposite side of the room did not immediately notice her distress. She brought her hands up to her face, touching the pads of her fingers to her cheeks. 

Cold sweat beaded at her temples and became hot; her face flushed suddenly, her palms dampened and became slippery. The beads around her neck glowed like fiery embers. She could feel them heating, slowly, slowly…. They were going to burn her.

Her fingers itched to touch them, to yank them away… She wanted to grab, to pull… Instead, she pulled her hands down to her sides and clenched her fists. Just the thought made her fingertips crackle.

The beads tightened, she could feel the string digging into her skin. Her knees went weak and she fell, striking the floor. The boys by the window turned.

"Misao?" Soujiro asked, taking a step forward and then stopping as the door behind her slid open. The young man's eyes widened in surprise and he took a step back toward the window, reaching back to place his palm upon the sill.

Misao hunched over bringing her hands up to her temples. "Ah…" she gasped trying to suck air in. "It burns," she hissed.

Behind her, Aoshi stepped inside and came up behind her. He reached down and slipped gloved fingers beneath the beaded necklace. Immediately, theycaught fire. He yanked and the flimsy string beneath broke. The beads scattered, falling and rolling on the floor. The tiny fireballs continued to burn, the fire smokeless.

Kneeling beside her, he slipped his hand into her garment. He felt the soft skin of her breast and laid his hand across it for a moment before his fingers touched the fine velvet of the pouch. He knew it at once and withdrew the item drawing Misao's gaze up.

Her eyes were changed, almost feral and her pupils were constricted into sharp points. He wondered then, for the first time, if her sanity would survive. She had been living on the fringes of society for ages; her sanity was precious and stretched so thin.

He noticed a blur of movement and looked up to see that Soujiro had leapt out the window, escaping. Aoshi took no further notice, instead he tipped the contents of the pouch into his palm and the crest caught fire, burning wildly in orange flames lapping at the material of his glove. Misao rose onto her feet steadily her eyes trained on the fireball and his eyes on her.

"This house is dead Misao."

With that, he closed his palm around the fiery necklace, there was a crunch and a wisp of smoke escaped the cracks in his hand. When he opened his palm a wave of metallic glitter and black charred specks spread over the floor. Her eyes widened, her small lips parted soundlessly.

Aoshi felt Hannya enter the room. "Go find the boy."

Hannya didn't hesitate to follow his orders, he disappeared. One remained by the windows and Aoshi took a peek in that direction.

"Aoshi-sama," she gasped brokenly. Her breathing was uneven, her little fists were curled into fists at her side.

"Are you hungry Misao?"

Her mouth moved but no sound came out. Her eyes dropped from his toward the windows where Kamatari still stood, silent and curious. Was he afraid, standing there waiting to see what she would do? Did he know how dangerous she was?

Aoshi raised his hand and laid his palm on her shoulder. She started at the touch, jumping under his hand. He could feel the fine tremors of her shaking. How had she survived, he wondered for a brief moment. Sliding his hand down her back, he began to stroke her gently, up and down, from her shoulder almost down to the length of her hip and her trembling eased.

He leaned down, pressing his mouth close to the shell of her ear. "Hear it?" He brought both hands up and laid two fingers gently on each side of her temple and tapped. Again and again and again…

_Tap-tap._

_Tap-tap._

_Lub-dub._

_Lub-dub._

Sweat beaded at her temples.

"Hear it?" he whispered again.

He knew what she was feeling. Starvation was powerful, primitive. All the moral fences she'd put up, all her human rules crumbled like ash as the holy wards melted away, the beads that burned on the floor. She'd never properly fed, her wards, her very mind… the mind could do such amazing things to the body… but Misao had missed ecstasy.

He'd show it to her… He'd _bring_ it to her.

"Taste it," he muttered urgently into her ear.

The tension was making _him_ hungry but not for the curious young male on the opposite side of the room. He wanted _her._ He wanted to lick the blood from her mouth after she fed, he wanted to shove her back against the wall and take her hard, he wanted… he wanted so desperately to growl at Hannya and punish him for forbidding him this treasure.

Misao teetered forward, toward Kamatari. The young man's eyes widened and he back up a pace looking worried, his eyes cast about and then back at the window. Seeing him about to flee, Asohi discreetly slid his kodachi from its sheath.

Misao leapt wildly and Kamatari dashed suddenly and skidded to an abrupt, cold stop. Misao turned her wild eyes to her prey as the scent of blood permeated the room, rising up like a cloud of steam perfuming the air. Kamatari fell to his knees, his mouth open. Blood dribbled down his chin… he was utterly still.

Misao crept up to him and slid to the floor at his side. He watched her, what would she do? She wrapped her hand around the blade jutting through Kamatari's center and pulled it out staring at the gleaming metal.

Maybe… maybe, he thought, she needed to be guided.

Just as he was about to approach her, she tossed the sword to the floor and leaned close. Kamatari's gasp was enough for Aoshi to know she'd bitten him. He'd heard a female vampire's bite was euphoric, but he'd heard horror stories enough to know not all women were gifted with it. Misao, it seemed, was.

Jealously, he watched as Kamatari gasped and trembled as Misao drank from him, his body was taut with pleasure. Misao's victims would never leave her side wanting or in pain… The longer she bent over him, the more his jealousy grew until he could watch no longer.

Only the tapping sound of Hannya reappearing at the window stopped him from advancing toward Misao.

"Is our business here concluded, Aoshi-sama?"

"Yes, go back."

Hannya was wise to say nothing further and he vanished. Stalking forward, he snatched her backward by her collar, ripping her away from the dazed boy on the ground. Grabbing his kodachi from the floor, he took her wrist and they, too, disappeared.

* * *

Okina waited, his brow furrowed, at the front door while he waited for Aoshi-sama. Hannya's appearance had been brief and curt. He had barely shoved a boy at him in the front door, growled about his orders and just as soon left. With the prisoner detained in another room and Hannya long gone, Okina could only wait in unease for his master to return. 

Aoshi-sama had been restless lately. Terribly restless and it only seemed to be worsening. With a sigh, he folded his hands together and continued to wait. Scarcely a moment had ticked by and the door was thrown open and Aoshi-sama stalked through it. Okina opened his mouth to address the man when he caught sight of the tiny slip of a female being _dragged_ by her arm along behind him.

"Ah… Aoshi-sama?"

"Do not disturb me."

Okina glanced over the girl noting the bloody smudges on her fingers, down her shirt, around her mouth. Her eyes were dazed. Was this the girl? The one Okon and Omasu had been spying on for Aoshi-sama?

His master stalked toward the stairs and then abruptly up them. Okina heard the master's door slid shut, the wood panes snapping against one another.

Oh.

_Oh_.

Do not disturb indeed.

* * *

AN: One more chapter... just one. Just one. Ready for Chiraki? 


	9. Part IX Final

**The Trap of Innocence**

**Part IX**

* * *

Her eyes were heavy. 

Her body felt kind of heavy too.

Flickering open the lazy lids of her eyes, she focused her eyes ahead. Straight up. She blinked lazily. It was a bedroom, wasn't it? Where was she again? She'd been with Kamatari and the seals were breaking. Without really acknowledging it, she must've sensed it, she thought.

Then Aoshi-sama had shown up. The crest was taken away; it burned. She could still smell the smoke. All the seals were broken too and then… Had Aoshi-sama thrown his blade at Kamatari? She didn't remember seeing him move, but she knew the smell of Kamatari's blood. Moreover, she knew the taste of it. She'd have licked him dry if Aoshi-sama hadn't stopped her.

She remembered the after part. Her entire body had been energized. It was like someone had stuffed overcharged batteries into her belly. She'd wanted to fight, to run… to… to… It was a restless, manic kind of energy.

He'd dragged her back to the mansion.

Here.

And…

Inside that room.

No, _this_ room.

_My_… she breathed softly. He'd given her something to do with all that pent up energy. She turned her head languidly to the side where he was laying beside her. His back was to her.

She stared at the scratch marks in his flesh. Had she really been that wild with him? She could see teeth marks in the crown of his shoulder. Slowly, she pulled herself up and inched toward him. The sheets rustled as she moved. Irritated, she shoved them down toward her hips. Her skin felt overly warm and the sheet annoyed her.

Raising one hand to reach out and touch him, she was caught by the sight of her nails. They were brownish around the edges where the nail met flesh, the delicate arches.

Blood.

She really had gotten that wild with him, hadn't she? Would he be angry? The bedding too was stained, she noticed, glancing at the brown markings. Blood was ugly when it dried.

"Aoshi-sama?" she whispered softly.

Part of her hoped he was asleep.

With a leisurely kind of sigh, he turned; rolled toward her onto his back and she met his bright, crisp colored eyes.

"How do you feel?" he asked.

There was something reassuring about his monotone question.

"Sorry. I… I mean… it looks like I … I mean, did I scratch you like that? That part is kind of hazy…"

For a long moment he just stared at her, naked from the neck down, but his eyes never left her face.

"Yes."

"Yes" she'd scratched him or "yes" to something else? She settled for just nodding absently.

"You bit me." He waited until she raised her eyes again to his face before speaking again. Then he raised his hand toward his shoulder. "Here."

He traced that same hand down to his chest, his long fingers sliding over his scarred, muscular pectorals. "Here." There were a set of teeth marks near his nipple.

His hand traveled lower across his abs, toward his side by his hip bone. "Here."

Further still, beneath the limp white sheet. He spread his legs wider, his hand falling between them beneath the blanket. "Here." Was his hand on the inside of his thigh or… she flushed and looked away.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Her face felt like an ember. Her whole body felt hot. How could she have embarrassed herself like that?

He sat up. She watched him for signs of pain but he gave her none. Pushing her fallen hair over one shoulder, he gently tilted her head to the side and leaned over her. With a soft flick of his tongue against her, he marked the place he wanted her. As her breath hitched in her throat, he sank his teeth into her.

* * *

Misao squirmed. The kimono she was being dressed in was heavy. How many layers did she have to wear? The obi, too, felt thick around her. She was unfamiliar with the stiff formal kimono. Why was she wearing this thing at all? 

The knock on the door caused her head to snap up, startled, slamming her head into her assistant's chin. Misao frowned and the woman helping her went to answer the door, rubbing her chin. Misao couldn't remember her name. Did it start with an "O"?

Misao peered in the mirror. She was surprised… she looked so elegant. The dainty hair combs, the delicate touches of make-up… Why was he dressing her up like this? She was… did this have something to do with her being the heir of the dead Ashataru house?

"Are you ready?"

She glanced back to see her new lover behind her. He was wearing the same formal wear in black. It was odd to think of him as a "lover" considering in her somewhat short seventy-five years of life she hadn't had one before.

"Why am I all dressed up?"

"I'm inducting you to the Shinomori House."

Inducting?

"I thought I was already part of this house?"

He motioned her forward, ushering her out the door. If he noticed the tiny, tiny steps she was required to make in the formal kimono that slowed her normal pace, he said nothing.

There were more people out there by the stairs and she could see more at the base of the stairs. He led her down them noticing how as they passed the people standing about bowed. Was this how people were supposed to treat their head of house?

At the back door, an old man was waiting, a red bow tied about his little beard. He smiled as he saw them approaching.

"Good morning, Aoshi-sama, Ashataru-sama. Welcome. Are you all ready?"

"Yes," Aoshi answered.

Ashataru-sama? Were people going to call her that? Did she really need a "-sama" on her name? Was that proper? The man who had not introduced himself pulled open the door and Misao's breath escaped her at the sight beyond.

The backyard was full of people. Two huge groups with an aisle down the center. She froze, but Aoshi pulled her forward, closer and closer. The guests rose to stand, bowing as they walked by. Misao stared as she was pulled by them. She recognized Hannya near the front and beside him Shikijou, the huge towering man she worked as a guardian for… What kind of event was this? Why wouldn't he tell her? It kind of looked like a wedding ceremony.

On the other side was that other guy… from before… Saitou, she thought. The head of the House of Saitou. There were two women with him, neither Misao had ever seen. Everyone was dressed up. Why didn't she know what kind of event this was? Why wouldn't he tell her and…?

At the front of the room a man in black robes stood. "Gentlemen, Ladies… Heads of Houses, Saitou-sama, Shinomori-sama. You've all been gathered here this morning to recognize the survivors of the Ashataru House and to witness the joining of the Ashataru and Shinomori Houses."

Murmurings rose up around them, bits of conversation and speculation.

"The House of Ashataru, thought to be eliminated by the forces of Shishio Makoto, was survived by the daughter Ashataru Chiraki. Ashtaru Chiraki bore a child, another daughter, Makimachi Misao, who today will be formally joined with the House of Shinomori."

Formally joined?

Inducted?

As in…?

"Today, we will welcome the last Ashataru heir, Makimachi Misao, into the Shinomori house, as the Lady Head, mate to Shinomori Aoshi."

There was another round of murmurs and a few gasps of surprise. Misao herself was surprised.

Lady…

She opened her mouth to protest what she viewed as a twisted, unfair turn of events but a sharp glare from her "lover" stopped her. He… did she want to… do this? Become the leading female of the Shinomori house? Did, really, she have any choice? If she was the last heir of the House of Ashataru… was she obligated to formally join the Shinomori house this way? To give closure and an honorable instead of tragic end to her would-be family house? It seemed sensible. It all clicked into place inside her head, so she remained silent.

"Esteemed guests, you are invited to present any evidence to suggest this woman not be accepted by our Head of House. Stand now."

The room was silent, no one scarcely moved. Misao dry swallowed.

"The Shinomori clan gives our acceptance with our silence," the man in black continued, bowing briefly to Aoshi and then to Misao. "Makimachi," he paused and then swung an arm dramatically toward Hannya. "Hannya. Do you give your consent, for this biological child of yours, to be given to our Head of House as mate?"

The room collectively turned toward Hannya, but the masked man stayed very still. The silence was bordering on rude and negative when he finally spoke up, a tiny glint of light flashing from the forehead of his mask. "I do not disapprove."

"This is deemed as acceptance," the man in black continued, turning then to the other side. "Ashataru Chiraki. Do you give permission for this biological child of yours to be wed to the House of Shinomori?"

A woman, with hair as long as her frame stood on delicately formed feet. With a tiny, curved smile she spoke, barely audible. "I am very pleased to do so."

Misao stared at the woman in wonder. Was that tiny, submissive creature truly the one who'd given birth to her? She tilted her head in contemplation. Ashataru Chiraki looked like the women Misao had seen in old wood-block prints with the long hair and the flowing kimono's… It was surreal.

"It is deemed as acceptance. Clan elder, Okina, do you accept this woman to be our new Lady Head?"

The man with the little bow, standing almost directly behind her and Aoshi bowed deeply. She and Aoshi ended up leaning back so that he could be visualized. Without glancing at either her or Aoshi, the man answered.

"I follow Aoshi-sama in all things. I accept this woman wholly." The words were soft spoken, almost reverently and the entire half of the room belonging to the Shinomori Clan was affected. They bowed in unison.

It was startling.

Misao was starting to feel panicky.

"Shinomori-sama, do you accept this woman, whole as presented to us, as your Mate, to lead the House of Shinomori by your side, the discharge her duties to produce an heir and uphold the traditions and rules of the House of Shinomori?"

"Aa."

Misao's breath was caught somewhere in her chest. She took a moment to ponder the possibility of having swallowed it while she tried to block out the proceedings. It was too much.

"Makimachi Misao, Heir of Ashataru… You have been given acceptance by your house and heard the acceptance of our house… Do you consent to the terms presented to you? Being Mate to our Head of House, to producing an heir, to upholding our laws and traditions?"

The room waited in bated silence for her answer. Did anyone suspect she would say no? No one had disapproved and yet… was this an odd ending to a weird adventure…

To think it had all started with a peeping-tom incident. Her dry mouth opened. "Yes."

If she said anything, anymore than one word, she was certain she'd burst and she wasn't sure what would come out. Only that if she did, something bad would probably happen. Formal events had never been a strong point for her.

The man in black raised his arms. "Gentlemen! Bring the sake!"

* * *

It was a wedding party. Misao had reconciled herself to that. After being forced to ingest sake with Aoshi-sama to "seal her marriage" she was feeling a bit tipsy. Maybe she was just a bit moody. 

Standing by the window peering outside in the relative peace of the hall, she was surprised when one of her wrists was grasped from behind by a large, meaty hand. She recognized Aoshi-sama's touch and turned.

"Come."

A man of few words, she thought. Too few sometimes. He led her to a room at the end of the hall. She wasn't surprised to see it held a group of select visitors. Aoshi-sama wasn't much of a partier, was he?

He led her into the room and she ended up seated next to him. The significance of her placement wasn't lost on her, as an ordinary wife of a Head of House it would've been appropriate for her to sit back, further behind him. Omasu had been chatting in her ear for almost an hour previous about what she was expected to do and act and Misao had sought some peace in the silence of the hall.

At the table with them was the other Head, the weird man Saitou, and two women. Ashtaru Chiraki Misao recognized immediately. There was no way, it would be singularly impossible forget a face like porcelain.

Saitou sported a cigarette between his thin lips and puffed on it contentedly while the two women sat in silence.

"So, congratulations," the man offered.

Aoshi nodded his head briefly.

"We're here to turn her over to you." Saitou cast a glance toward Chiraki whose head was bowed toward the floor hiding her eyes.

"Aa," Aoshi agreed. He inclined his head slightly toward Misao. "Ashataru-san has been in the custody of the Saitou House. As of today, she is being remanded to us."

Misao's lips pursed as she thought. "I don't get it," she stated plainly. "Why was she with them?"

"Distant relation," Saitou answered.

"Oh," Misao replied, her expression shifting to one of concentration. "So she's coming back here…"

"Weasel," Saitou breathed, a puff of smoke escaping his lips. "Let me make this real easy for you. Chiraki was adopted into my family years ago, but now that you've shown up, her daughter, it's your responsibility to care for her."

Misao blinked and Chiraki's head popped up, her eyes wide and child-like. "I… You're leaving me? I… have I been a terrible burden, Saitou-sama? I apologize deeply." The woman bowed so low her forehead touched the floor. Her hair spilled over the tatami like a black pool. It was picturesque in its simple beauty.

"You and the weasel belong with each other," Saitou answered shortly.

"Misao…" the woman whispered. "My baby… I was making her a doll, it's almost done."

The small milky hands slipped into the folds of her obi producing a small, almost complete doll. Misao was astonished at the fine workmanship. It was dressed in layer after layer of kimono. How many kimono had the woman made? Was she… disturbed?

"Yeah," Saitou answered. "You ought to give her that."

"Oh no," Chiraki murmured. "It isn't done yet; it has to be perfect for my baby."

"If this is too great an imposition upon you, Shinomori-san-" the other woman started to speak, but Saitou silenced her with a wave of his hand.

"It's his responsibility flatly."

"We have no problem accepting Ashtaru Chiraki into this house," Aoshi replied blankly.

The woman, Misao guessed she might be Saitou's wife, looked a bit disconcerted. Had this woman taken care of her mother for a long time?

"We will leave you then." Saitou stood and the woman next to him seemed reluctant to do so. Chiraki also stood, but the woman turned to her and took her hands.

"You're staying here, Chiraki."

"Here? With strangers?" she whispered.

"Your daughter is here to take care of you; you want to see her don't you? She's your family."

Chiraki's eyes shimmered. "My baby…"

"So you need to stay here with her."

"But… I…"

"Everything will be all right. We will see you again."

With that, the woman's clasped hands fell apart and Saitou's wife stepped back, following her husband out the door. Aoshi made no attempt to stop them, no invitations to tea or dinner; he let them go and the ensuing silence left Misao feeling squirmy.

"What just happened?" she asked blankly, staring at the woman, her mother, who had gone totally still. "This day is funky."

Aoshi slanted a glance toward her. "Let's show Ashtaru-san her room."

* * *

"She needs an attendant," Misao murmured as they quietly left the room Aoshi had had prepared for Chiraki. "She can't be alone, just look at her. What happened to her anyway? Is her head messed up?" Misao whispered anxiously in the hall. 

Taking her wrist, Aoshi led her away. Their room was far, far down the hall.

"Ashtaru-san was traumatized by the slaughter of her family. It is assumed she will never lead a normal life."

Misao bit her lip, the tips of her fangs pressing gently against her flesh. The sight of the tooth drew Aoshi's attention. "So… If she's like this, how did she and Hannya have a baby? Did he take advantage of her?"

Abruptly, Misao was pulled into a side room. "Hannya's relationship with her is not of immediate importance," he murmured lowering his head, his mouth, to hers. He sucked the breath from her chest and trailed kisses down her jaw, licking then up her neck. Kneeling, he pulled his collar away, allowing it to slide off one shoulder exposing a great span of his chest. Automatically, her hands rose to press her palms against his hot, smooth skin, her fingertips finding his flat nipple, her mouth finding his shoulder.

There was a faint shudder as her tongue flicked along his clavicle and a more pronounced one as she closed her mouth over the hard box at the center of his throat and sucked. Slinking his hands away from her clothes, he dove them into her hair, angling her head, her mouth against his neck.

"Misao," he murmured.

Her teeth found him; the pleasure was exquisite.

"How could you do such a thing?" Misao growled across the table at her masked "father". Father had always seemed such a foreign term for the masked demon "man" that was Hannya. "How could you take advantage of a woman that way?"

"You do not understand," Hannya answered stonily. "She isn't always this way."

Misao, indignant, refused to be placated and slammed her fist against the table. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that Chiraki has periods of great lucidity. There are times when she isn't a wide-eyed innocent, despite how she may appear to you; she is a grown-adult woman, Misao. Somewhere in her head, that part of her personality exists."

"You said you didn't remember! That you didn't know anything!" she accused.

He shrugged absently, taking a brief glance at Aoshi-sama sitting behind her at a desk near the wall. Their Head of House was listening but showed no interest or intent of getting involved directly.

"At first I knew nothing but her name, over time I learned a few things. When I discovered that she was not… complete, what could I have said? What difference would it have made?"

Misao frowned and then flopped herself down onto the floor irritably. "Well this whole situation just sucks. You get a disturbed woman pregnant, she goes nuts and abandons me at a Temple, you and they lie to me about being a half-breed vampire, I wander around doing Guardian duty for Shikijou and meet him," she cocked a finger back at Aoshi. "And then I end up, what, married to him and with my long lost not so human mother in the place I told myself I hated for the last 75 years. This is incredibly weird."

Hannya shrugged at her again. "In actuality, things have worked out well."

"Really," she answered. "Are you going to participate in Chiraki's care, she remembers you, you know. I spent the whole morning with her yesterday, she talked about me half the morning and you the other half. You are her 'precious love Hannya'."

"Do not mock me, Misao. Do you think a woman is unable to love me because of this face?"

She was clearly taken aback by the sharp tone. "Of course I don't think that," she replied. "I love you no matter what your face looks like."

A long moment of silence followed. Misao laid her head down on the table and her eyes fluttered closed.

"Are you unhappy with the way things have worked out?" Hannya whispered.

"No. I like Aoshi-sama, despite the fact some of the people in his house are a bit weird, I even like living here. I'm not alone anymore. I don't understand about the miko's though, why did the seals work if I wasn't only half-vampire? Shouldn't they have killed me or something?"

"You grew from a very young age under the influence of holy powers. It doesn't seem unlikely that you simply became accustomed to the flow of its power although it substantially weakened you."

"When you fully regain your strength you will be a fine huntress." The voice, from far over Misao's shoulder drew her to lift her head to look back at her "mate."

"That's gross," she answered.

"We will go together," Aoshi replied flicking his eyes up at her. "I will show you how to make it something beautiful."

"Yeah, that's gross," she answered again. She laid her head back down on the table, but Hannya saw the curve of her lips.

It had been an odd journey.

* * *

AN: That's it, final chapter. And as with most things I write the beginning and end feel disconnected, or at least without the same tone. 


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